Oculus says future Rift hardware is coming despite Iribe’s exit

As reported earlier today, Oculus cofounder Brendan Iribe announced that he’s leaving the company, the latest in a string of executive-level departures from Facebook. But despite a report claiming that Iribe quit over Facebook’s decision to cancel “Rift 2,” a company spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that a next-generation Oculus Rift headset is still in the works.The allegation of Rift 2’s cancellation first appeared in a report from TechCrunch, which claimed that Facebook’s executive team shut down the next-generation PC VR headset’s development last week to focus on standalone headsets that don’t require either a smartphone or PC to generate their graphics. According to the report, Facebook’s decision to kill Rift 2 was the latest element in a debate over the “future of Oculus that grew deeper over time.”However, Oculus disputed this account when contacted for comment, and said that the company is still “planning a future version of Rift.” At September’s Oculus Connect 5 developers conference, the company laid out plans to support the continued evolution of three separate VR platforms: the low-end standalone Go, the midrange standalone Quest, and the high-end tethered Rift. As Mark Zuckerberg noted, “when we release the next version of Rift — which isn’t this year — all of the content that works for Rift will also work on the next version.”