Samsung has worked with Oculus in the past on its Gear VR headsets, and Oculus appears to be building on that platform with the Go headset.

The stand-alone headset, called Oculus Go, is coming out sometime next year, according to the official announcement.

Last summer, the Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch bundle enjoyed an appealing $100 six-week price drop down to $399.

Oculus has been working on a full-fledged standalone virtual reality headset for quite some time now. Every app that runs on the Gear VR will work with the Oculus Go, and vice versa.

Oculus is announcing a revamped Rift interface it refers to as Rift Core 2.0, which supports 2D desktop windows and a customizable VR home space. Spatial audio is also built into the Oculus Go headset; there's no requirement for headphones.

"We want to get a billion people in virtual reality", Zuckerberg said.

Speaking at Facebook's yearly virtual reality developers conference in San Jose, Mr Zuckerberg acknowledged the slow adoption of the technology to date. Other specifications like battery life will be detailed in the future, although developers will start getting kits this November. The company didn't talk potential prices, but we suspect Santa Cruz will be more expensive than the $199 standalone Oculus Go, especially if it comes packaged with a pair of motion controllers.

You can't say Mark Zuckerberg doesn't aim high.

This year, the company showed off Santa Cruz Controllers and headset that look ready for the mass market.

All of these features slowly articulate the advantages of three-dimensional and virtual reality content, which has its converts in the gaming world but has faced a more skeptical mainstream audience that has yet to see the value.