‘Oculus for Business’ launches to help enterprises build VR

Oculus wants to help companies like Walmart and Deloitte build VR experiences for their clients and customers. So today it launched “Oculus for Business,” which lets companies buy $900 Oculus Rift bundles in bulk with enterprise-grade warranties, a full VR commercial license and access to dedicated customer support.

The announcement came from Oculus’ Hugo Barra at the company’s Oculus Connect conference in San Jose. Adapting to enterprises could help boost Oculus Rift sales, and lean on parent company Facebook’s extensive network of business clients.

Audi is one of the launch partners, which is using Oculus for Business to build VR showrooms where you can configure a car and actually walk around it before you buy. Cisco has built a VR collaboration environment for cooperating on designs on a VR canvas or whiteboard.

Cisco used Oculus for Business to build this collaboration environment

The $900 Oculus for Business bundles will come with an Oculus Rift, remote, Touch controllers, three sensors for creating room-scale VR, plus extra face pads so businesses can accommodate high volumes of different users.

Apple and other companies have had success by pitching to businesses new hardware like iPads. And the strategy could work even better for Oculus. Most people don’t have the cash, space or expertise to build a room-scale VR rig inside their home. It would sit idle most of the time anyway. But a business could much more easily dedicate a VR room, have staff knowledgeable enough to set it up and achieve a constant flow of customers or co-workers to make it all worthwhile.