It appears Samsung is done with Gear VR family of virtual reality solutions. Because it is now winding down the XR service, a backend that has been powering most of its 360-degree content that we have seen in recent years. A big portion of all content compatible with Gear VR headsets was actually powered by XR. So, a decision to start shutting down this service seems to be quite a big indicator that the Gear VR experiment is also approaching its finish line.
Especially since Samsung itself just issued a statement about how it is currently “rethinking” this whole immersive video idea. Which sounds like it is planning to replace Gear VR with something different enough to deserve its very own brand. But this news probably does not spell an end to all of Samsung’s VR experiments. Yet it does make it less clear when we might see new VR hardware from the company.
Samsung most recently partnered with Facebook and its Oculus subsidiary, but that experiment apparently didn’t impress the company’s executives. As for XR, the service will still be live until September 30th of this year. Which is when all user accounts and their data will get wiped out, so make sure to download your content by then if you do not want to lose it forever.
