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jeremydeats
Up and Coming
October 24, 2018

Will Oculus Quest follow the footsteps of GearVR and Go and be an open platform for developers?

It was great to learn how easy Oculus made Go development. After about an hour of downloading the needed Android tools and Unity I was able to plug my Oculus Go in via USB, perform a Build & Deploy in Unity and get some demo code I had downloaded up and running.... This is an open platform. Sure, there are a few more steps than that to get the app into the Oculus Store. There is an approval process for that, but in general I can build my own software and the Go is designed to let toggle developer mode and run custom software. I've heard Quest might be a closed platform with developer mode option intentionally disabled in firmware in retail models. That would mean to do any development we would have to be approved for and purchase a dev kit version of Quest. I hope Oculus can knock down this rumor.

    2 replies

    MikeF
    Inspiring
    October 24, 2018
    I cant see any reason for this to be true. All hardware to date also functions as a dev kit so hindering that with something that is supposed to have mass consumer appeal wouldn't make sense
    jeremydeatsAuthor
    Up and Coming
    October 24, 2018
    Thanks for the response Mike. I was thinking this as well, but I also know how console manufacturers always lock down development so considering that ,I was thinking Oculus might be taking the "Quest is a game console" philosophy to it that level... Thinking about it that way, it might be odd for Oculus to leave it open but I might be wrong... I would not be all that surprised if they decide to lock it down. They also have made kiosk mode an exclusive to the business version of the Oculus Go (which I believe cost $100 more) so having special firmware for specific things seems to be a pattern. 
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