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Games

McDonald’s Has Entered the Virtual Reality Market

The fast-food company's "Happy Goggles" are on sale in Sweden, right now.

Screengrab via YouTube

2016 will see many a player in the virtual reality market make their most pressing moves yet for the biggest possible slice of this emerging-tech pie. We know that the HTC Vive headset is going to retail at $799, making it a clear two hundred dollars more expensive than the Oculus Rift. (Check Motherboard for more on this.) Microsoft's HoloLens looks interesting, even though its trailer featuring Conker turns the potty-mouthed Rare character into a boringly bland augmented-reality platform avatar. (Again, read more at Motherboard.) And Sony will hold a VR event on March 15th, which will reveal the price of their forthcoming PlayStation VR headset, previously known as Project Morpheus.

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But now there's a new runner in the race for VR supremacy. McDonald's, purveyors of burgers and fries and shakes and salads that I'm fairly sure nobody ever orders but they're up there on the menu anyway, is introducing their own Happy Goggles. No, seriously. Happy Goggles. By McDonald's.

As reported on Develop this morning (March 1st), the fast-food chain's cardboard Goggles are made from their Happy Meal boxes, which can be punched and folded to form smartphone-holding headsets. So far, the Happy Goggles have only been introduced to the Swedish market, with 3,500 retailing at outlets across the country for the equivalent of just over four American dollars. McDonald's will study how the rollout goes down in Sweden and may introduce their Happy Goggles into other territories later in 2016.

The release of the Happy Goggles coincides with a new game made by McDonald's, Slope Stars. Which I assume is about skiing, but let's be honest, you don't care. All you really want right now is a quarter-pounder with cheese, am I right? It's something about the way they slice the onions. Anyway, watch a trailer for Happy Goggles below, before you pop out for a greasy meat bun lunch break.

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