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Are Consumers Ready To Embrace Samsung's Virtual Reality Experience?

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— Samsung has released a new virtual reality headset dubbed Gear VR Innovator Edition— the first such device available to consumers, but it remains to be seen if consumers are ready to embrace this type of experience.

By placing a Galaxy Note 4 device in the Google-like apparatus, users will be "transported to amazing new worlds in games, video, and images" according to Samsung. However, tech analysts are asking what the goal is of such technology in the consumer market.

Engadget's Senior Editor Ben Gilbert said it's a $200 contraption that you purchase through Samsung's website. He described it as a shell for your Samsung Galaxy Note 4 phone.

"You already have to own one of these rather large phones and you slip that into the headset and that becomes the screen. Using the technology within the phone, it enables you to use the phone like a virtual reality device," he said.

But the question remains: What can you do with a device like this and what are you looking at when you have it on?

"Initially you'll only be able to do so much," Gilbert said. "A handful of demos are available from Samsung and Oculus VR, the folks that Facebook bought and they have worked together to create a variety of media viewing experiences."

The list, however, is limited to about a dozen to 15 applications. Right now the experience mostly involves photos, movies, and games. Samsung has said they'll be introducing a full store in early 2015.

Virtual reality as a medium in the past year has gone into the realm of social connectivity and as a way of using it as an Internet device. So it is making strides as far as something that has in the past been seen as a novelty and is becoming more practical.

"I think the goal of companies like Samsung, Oculus VR, or Sony— the various companies who are doing VR headsets are to make this into a medium that is much bigger than just entertainment. I think most people feel not so great about virtual reality as a medium. It's come and gone before and the past few years there's been resurgence."

Gilbert said a lot of people are hesitant to put on an oftentimes cumbersome headset, don't really know what they're getting into, and that it's perceived as anti-social behavior.

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