How Facebook plans to get 1 billion people into virtual reality, according to the VP tasked with doing it
The mission of leading Facebook's virtual reality business now falls on Hugo Barra, who joined Facebook six months ago with the newly-created title "VP of VR."- Despite lackluster consumer interest, early missteps, and a lot of change in leadership, Facebook still has big plans to get a billion people into virtual reality.
- Barra sat down with Business Insider and explained how he intends to accomplish such a lofty goal.
One of Barra's recent announcements is the Oculus for Business Program, which allows enterprise customers to buy bulk orders of Oculus headsets for commercial use.
Meanwhile, Facebook will also try to raise awareness for VR in other ways. Oculus will run ad campaigns for its forthcoming Go headset and the lowered cost of its higher-end Rift system.
In fact, Facebook tested the retail idea a bit last winter, when it showed off its Oculus Rift technology in various short-term pop-up stores around the country.
Barra points to the 2,000 apps, including titles from the likes of Pixar, and over 100 million downloads on the Oculus platform as evidence that VR is already catching on outside of the early-adopter crowd. Zuckerberg has said Facebook plans to spend billions of dollars over the next several years on developing VR along with paying developers to create apps and games.
"Awareness comes with having a wide product portfolio," said Barra. "Amazing things take time to build."
See the full story here: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebooks-oculus-go-santa-cruz-headsets-plan-to-make-vr-mainstream-2017-10