James R | On 24, Jun 2019

The Google Play Movies & TV app has disappeared from Google’s Daydream virtual reality (VR) platform.

Google’s flagship VR platform, which launched in 2016, is built into the Android OS and Google’s Daydream View headset. One of the apps featured within Daydream was the Google Play Movies & TV online store, which allowed users to buy and rent movie and episodes of TV shows. Now, however, the app has been removed.

Customers who have purchased or rented titles through the Play Store can still watch them via the YouTube VR app on Daydream instead. Indeed, YouTube and Google Play have long shared the same library of transactional VOD titles. Within the YouTube VR app on Daydream, though, this is no way to actually purchase videos – only access them.

The decision echoes a similar move from Facebook last year, which also shut down its own VOD store within Rift, while the social network’s Quest headset does not currently offer paid video rentals. It also joins other moves by Google in recent months to place more of a focus on augmented reality (AR) than VR. Indeed the Spotlight Stories VR studio was shuttered by Google earlier this year, along with its Jump VR camera and cloud stitching service.

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