Oculus Cancels Development Of “Rift 2”, But That Doesn’t Mean Much

For virtual reality fans, news last week of the cancellation of a “Rift 2” from Oculus might have come as a bit of a shock. After all, Oculus was arguably the reason VR started to gain real traction, spearheading companies like HTC to move on in and deliver market-leading solutions. It’d be unfortunate for the young successful company to already pack it in, especially when it’s backed by the biggest social media giant on the planet.

Oculus’s popular Rift VR headset

Well, as it happens, the fun of linguistics have reared their ugly head here. Or, we just jumped to conclusions. Just because a “Rift 2” is canceled does not mean that there will not be another Oculus Rift. This is something that’s confirmed by the author of the original TechCrunch story on Twitter (seen below).

Plans to build a PC headset further down the line is a different clarification than them shelving plans for a productized “Rift 2” headset. There may be future PC headset with the Rift name, but the next-generation that was being planned has been cancelled. https://t.co/9MILJIoyc8

— Lucas Matney (@lucasmtny) October 22, 2018

After Oculus denied TechCrunch‘s report, a statement was sent to Variety‘s Jank Roettgers with a very straight-forward (and welcomed) answer: “Yes, we are planning a future version of Rift.”

Of course, a comment like that can’t be made without immediate speculation kicking off. Just because there’s going to be a future version doesn’t mean that it’s going to be high-end or market-leading in terms of performance. We may very well not see another proper “Rift 2” that follows in the footsteps of the original. It could be that Oculus would prefer to go forward focusing on mobile VR, since that’s where the market has true potential for growth. $600+ headsets remain out of reach for many.

At the same time, there’s certainly room for both kinds of headsets on the market, mobile and console- or PC-bound. HTC earlier this year released its Vive Pro, so we’d really hope to see a proper follow-up from Oculus at some point, but… it’s at least nice to know that words are easily misconstrued and that further Rift development is in fact happening.