Six months later, one VR enthusiast’s Oculus Go finds new life.

I have had an Oculus Go since it’s public launch back in May. During those six months, it has primarily occupied a coveted piece of real estate tucked away in the top drawer of my bureau. How could a device that is objectively a technological marvel and when launched brought with it a huge wave of initial excitement end up with such a sad fate, and now six months later what changed?

The Oculus Go is the standalone realization and ultimate form of the GearVR platform. As a long time VR fan but iPhone user mobile VR had long enticed yet eluded me. Finally, it could be had without the need to pick up a Samsung phone or switch to a phone capable of supporting Google’s Daydream VR platform. It was a great opportunity!

Tearing the box open and slamming the Go upon my face the first thing that hit me was the screen. Even though the Vive Pro had been announced/released around this time, the Oculus Go had the highest resolution screen with the best optics that I had ever seen personally. It was a revelation. The first thought which came to mind after “wow” was, “I need a Rift with this screen” (recent mention of the Rift S mean this something similar to this idea may actually appear soon.). Safe to say though, I was extremely happy with my first impression.

Gaining access to the deep and long withheld GearVR library was also a huge boon after years of reading (and occasionally cursing the vast development resources devoted to it and not PC VR) about it.

Land’s End, Skylight, The Well and Anshar Online were my first game experiences and they each impressed in their own ways. I even insisted my VR-curious but inexperienced wife give it a shot and, as a huge fan of Monument Valley, she fell in love with love Land’s End immediately (spousal support is always vital).

Yet none of these initial successes could prolong my usage lifespan past the first couple of weeks. Oculus themselves revealed that the Go is being used 80% of the time for content viewing and only 20% of the time for gaming and although I did enjoy the video apps on hand (most notably a few hours of Netflix and NextVR’s awesome NBA game coverage), I:

a.) did not find it compelling enough to return to beyond my initial explorations.

b.) just do not watch that much video content so am not the ideal Go using candidate.

My own shortcomings as a user aside, the Go also let me down in a few vital ways. Having already been a devoted Rift user I already owned a lot of the gaming content best suited for the Go on the Rift. The only solution in the vast majority of cases? Re-buy very similar apps on this new but very similar platform. Inconvenient enough to cause me to miss out on some content I am certain I would have enjoyed more on the Go. (Oculus, please figure this out before the Quest launches it is extremely important to your pre-existing customers).

Other than that, the minimal battery life and the constant battle with the proximity sensor and the automatic powering on were annoyances but not deal breakers.

Overall, what stifled my Go usage and caused its’ unfortunate relegation to my sock drawer was it’s bigger brother, the Oculus Rift. Traveling aside, when deployed side by side I found the fully tracked and PC-powered experiences of the Rift far more compelling.

By and large, apart from a brief return to Oculus Venues during OC5’s keynote (which is kind of a self-fulfilling use case), my Oculus Go has gone woefully underutilized.

A shame because it is a terrific little device. As I mentioned above the optics and screen are top notch and superior to all but the latest and highest end competitors. The content has continued to roll out with a slow and steady cadence, punctuated every now and again by a big port or novel distraction.

Leading the resurgence in own my case were Eclipse: Edge of Light and Thumper. The former a long time hold out from Go/GearVR as Google Daydream’s standout title and the later an old favourite granted new life on a conveniently portable platform.

The upcoming Oculus Quest may have sought to be the Nintendo Switch of VR, but in the interim before its launch the Oculus Go is having no problem filling that role for me.

Its optics, portability and library form a terrific trifecta which maximizes instantaneous fun and simplicity at a low cost. Its’ 6dof (6 degrees of freedom) brethren might be about to steal its thunder, but I predict the (likely) year-long window of time with my Go will prove to the perfect length stopover.

Six months down, six to go and my wish list is stocked with enough content to keep me busy at least that long. I may have missed out by and large on the first half of the year of Go, but part two seems pretty full of potential. So charge it up, grab an Xbox One S gamepad, download some content and… Let’s Go! (sorry, I had to).