Oculus looks to VR arcades with new hirings

VR headset and entertainment provider Oculus may finally be getting into the arcade space.

As reported by Variety, the Facebook-owned company were found to have briefly listed a job vacancy for a 'Producer of Location Based Entertainment', strongly hinting at site-specific or arcade-based experiences using Oculus' VR technology.

The listing has now disappeared from their website, meaning that applications have likely closed (sorry to any disappointed arcade experts out there).

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The eventual candidate will be responsible for 'develop[ing] relationships with best-in-class LBE partners and developers", seemingly acting as a go-between for Oculus and partnering arcade providers.

HTC already has an established presence in VR arcades, partially due to it having brought room-scale tracking VR to market before its Oculus competitor.

Gold rush

It's been a bumper few years for Oculus since forming in 2012, seeing the company – and plenty of its competition – rush to bring mass-market VR experiences to consumers.

The likes of HTC Vive Pro, Samsung Gear VR, and Google Daydream are all hoping to find a cut of the technology's much-hyped market potential, though home-based experiences haven't taken off in the way many of them have hoped.

The adoption rate for VR headsets is still pretty low, though increasingly cheaper costs and wireless hardware could still be set to turn that around. Oculus recently announced the possibly game-changing Oculus Quest: an untethered headset capable of PC-quality virtual reality, which is rolling out to North America in early 2019.