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Facebook's Oculus Go is getting YouTube VR

And NBA games are coming to Oculus Venues, its concert and sports events app.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
Expertise Streaming video, film, television and music; virtual, augmented and mixed reality; deep fakes and synthetic media; content moderation and misinformation online Credentials
  • Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)
Joan E. Solsman
2 min read
A silhouette of a person in a VR headset

Facebook's Oculus laid out its plans for the coming year at its developer conference. 

James Martin/CNET

Oculus is bringing YouTube VR to its entry-level Oculus Go VR headset and adding NBA basketball games to its Oculus Venues app, Facebook's virtual reality unit said Wednesday, additions that mark an expansion of the type of video available for the company's virtual reality devices.  

The additions constitute baby steps toward addressing one of VR's underlying weaknesses: The scarcity of killer content that will win people over to the unfamiliar computing format. Widespread adoption of VR has been elusive, even as it remains one of technology's most-hyped trends. Without a gotta-see-it experience, consumers have resisted pouring hundreds of dollars into headsets like those from Oculus.

The announcements, made during the annual Oculus Connect developer conference, are designed to address that issue. YouTube VR, owned by search giant Google, already has 800,000 videos in VR, giving users access to more material. Adding NBA pro basketball games to the Oculus Venue, the company's concert and sports event app, will bring one of the world's most popular sports to the platform. NBA games will be available in the fall.

Watch this: YouTube and NBA coming to Oculus

Earlier in the conference, Oculus unveiled its next-generation standalone VR headset, Oculus Quest, which will be available in the spring for $399. That model bridges the gap between the high-end, PC-connected Oculus Rift and the entry-level $199 Oculus Go, which was introduced earlier this year. 

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