Oculus announces over 1 million active users on Gear VR, announces UI updates to improve app discoverability.
The Samsung Gear VR has crossed 1 million active users, according to a new report from Variety. In a media briefing held Tuesday, Oculus shared metrics on the VR device's progress and announced efforts to retain those users with UI updates to the device's home screen in order to improve app discoverability. It'll be adding a "what's new" section in the near future to highlight newer apps, and make revisions to the Gear VR home screen next month to emphasize downloaded content.
A similar update will be be pushed to the Oculus mobile app, which lets users download apps without using the headset, according to Oculus' own blog.
Oculus also says that developers have built 250 apps for the Gear VR, and 7 of the 10 most popular apps are video-related. The MIT Technology review reports that average Gear VR usage is currently 25 minutes per day, and that 80% of the people using the device are using it to watch video.
Currently, it's hard to read too much into these numbers, as Samsung's been giving away free Gear VRs with pre-orders of the new Samsung Galaxy S7 devices, and Oculus itself reports increased usage around the holidays as owners pass around the headset to show off the experience to friends and family. However, The MIT Technology review reports that Oculus' Max Cohen states that the company "wasn't expecting" to hit 1 million users quite this quickly.
Samsung did recently open up its Made for Samsung program to game developers, showing that the hardware maker is still interested in games on their platform despite the popularity of video.
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