Facebook’s whacking of Oculus Rift S is a mercy killing, not a mob hit

It’s no coincidence that Facebook is killing the Oculus Rift S VR headset on the same day it’s announcing the Oculus Quest 2 at Facebook Connect. On paper, the Go, Quest, and Rift families were supposed to be different devices for different markets, but they’ve coalesced over a much shorter period of time than people expected. Just as that meant the end for Go earlier this year, the death of Rift was a long-premeditated killing, arguably more a matter of when than whether.

The VR market was different when Facebook segmented Oculus products into three families. Go was a cheap 3DoF media viewer with minimal gaming potential, designed to appeal to people who didn’t want to spend more than $200 on a standalone VR headset — Walmart was a big Go customer. Quest was a $400 6DoF standalone alternative that was better than Go in every way, and highly capable of gaming, but not equivalent to a VR-ready PC. Lastly, Rift S was there as a $400 headset solely for PC VR purposes, with marginally better performance than Quest when connected to a Windows machine, but no ability to be used on its own.