Facebook says goodbye to Oculus Rift S

Facebook is taking a step even further away from tethered virtual reality headsets, saying it will end sales of the Oculus Rift S device in 2021. The news came during the company's Facebook Connect online event on Wednesday. Instead, the Oculus Quest, a VR device that can be used on its own, is being touted as the main direction for Facebook-owned Oculus.

Quest 2 will actually be able to work both standalone and connected to a PC, allowing it to take advantage of more robust computer VR games. And Oculus will continue to support VR headsets that connect to PC games, along with those games.

The Rift S is considered the next generation of the original Oculus Rift, a VR headset that was one of the first big leap into consumer-level VR content. Rift, the original, started as a Kickstarter launch in 2012, but by 2015 still hadn't opened pre-orders yet for the headset. That was already a year after Facebook acquired Oculus.

Not until 2016 did the VR device go on sale — and by 2017 Oculus had already slashed the price down to $399, finally discontinuing it in favor of the Rift S.

Oculus began to shift into untethered headsets, those that don't require a computer to push out content, with Oculus Go its first, which launched in 2018. The headset was also priced dramatically lower than Rift, with a starting price of $199, compared to $599 for the the Rift's headset alone when it launched. Go, of course, is now gone. And while Rift and Rift S users can expect that their devices will be supported for some time, Oculus is clearly moving in a new direction.

Oculus Quest All-in-one VR Gaming Headset – 64GB