History[edit]

Facebook Technologies' involvement in creating a portable form factor headset dates back to the
company's early days as Oculus VR.[8] While in discussion with Samsung about displays for
the Oculus Rift, Oculus's then-CEO, Brendan Iribe, was shown a mock-up phone holder headset
that Samsung wanted help developing.[9] Oculus agreed to a partnership with Samsung, and in
2014 the result was publicly revealed as the Gear VR Innovator Edition. While Samsung built the
hardware, Oculus developed the necessary application software, the Oculus Mobile SDK,
tracking sensor firmware, and optimized Android and the required GPU drivers for virtual reality.
[10][11]
The application software developed by Oculus for Gear VR included Oculus Home, a portal
for accessing virtual reality content, an app store called the Oculus Store, and Oculus Cinema,
an application for watching movies in various virtual environments.[12][13][14][15] The Oculus Store was
later used as the app store for the Oculus Go.[3] In 2015 Oculus Cinema was replaced by Oculus
Video, an app with similar functionality that was also included with the Oculus Go at the
headset's launch.[16][17] The Oculus Mobile SDK was later utilised to also allow development of
software for the Oculus Go and Xiaomi Mi VR.[7][18]
Rumors of an all-in-one Oculus headset first surfaced in July 2017 when Bloomberg reported that
later that year Oculus would announce an affordable virtual reality headset that didn't need to be
tethered to a PC or a phone. Codenamed "Pacific", the device would be lighter and more
powerful than the Samsung Gear VR and aimed at the use cases of gaming, social networking,
and watching videos and movies. It was also reported that the device would be equipped with a
mobile Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm, and that Oculus would be partnering with Chinese
electronics manufacturer Xiaomi to produce the headset. The device would carry Oculus's
branding worldwide with the exception of China, where a custom version of the headset would be
Xiaomi-branded and run some Xiaomi software.[19]

Hugo Barra demonstrating the Oculus Go on stage at

2018's Facebook F8 conference
The headset was officially announced under the name Oculus Go on October 11, 2017 at the
Oculus Connect developer conference and was slated to ship in early 2018.[20] Facebook
Technologies introduced the device as its first entry into the at-the-time new product category it
called "standalone", a class of virtual reality headsets that don't require an external computing
device like a smartphone or a personal computer to function.[20][21] Oculus's partnerships with
Qualcomm and Xiaomi, as well as Xiaomi's version of the headset called the Mi VR Standalone,
were revealed in January at CES 2018.[22][23] The Go was officially released on May 1, 2018.
[3]
Xiaomi released the Mi VR Standalone on May 31, 2018.[24]
On 3 May 2018, Facebook announced a business-oriented bundle of the Oculus Go with
commercial warranty, a worldwide multi-prong charger, and two facial interfaces. [25] The bundle
began shipping in July 2018.[26] In September 2018, Walmart announced the company would be
using Oculus Go headsets to expand its employee VR training program across the U.S. The
company would be sending four headsets to every Walmart supercenter and two units to every
Neighborhood Market and discount store, with over 17,000 units in stores by the end of 2018. [27][28]
In January 2020, Facebook lowered the Go's price to US$149 and US$199 for the 32 GB and 64
GB models respectively, down from the launch pricing of US$199 and US$249. Similar price
updates were rolled out to all countries where the Go was sold.[29] In the same month, the
company also dropped the Oculus Go from its upcoming Oculus for Business program, in which
the headset had been available during the platform's closed beta stage. [30]
On June 23, 2020, Facebook Technologies announced it will be ending sales of the Oculus Go
later that year and will not accept new Go apps or app updates into the Oculus Store after 4
December 2020. While new features will no longer be introduced to the headset, the system
software will continue to be maintained with fixes and security updates through 2022. [31][32][33]
In October 2021, Facebook released an update which can be sideloaded to unlock "full root
access" to the device hardware. This update is supposed to keep devices operational even after
official Facebook cloud infrastructure goes offline.[34]