Mattel Plans To Release Its New Google Cardboard Based Vr Toy On Ios By End Of The Year

Google and Mattel are holding a press event today to announce a new product that merges Google’s experimental Cardboard virtual reality platform with Mattel’s classic View-Master toy. Also announced at the event: Mattel plans to bring the new View-Master toy and with it Google’s Cardboard platform to the iPhone by the end of the year.

First announced in June of last year, the Cardboard platform utilizes an inexpensive VR headset constructed from cardboard to provide a virtual reality-like experience for Android apps. While the platform has been Android-only up until now, Mattel announced today that its new View-Master based on the Cardboard platform will come to other mobile devices such as iOS. It’s unclear if Google too will open up its own Cardboard hardware to iPhone users, but it appears it will at least let its hardware partners building VR headsets for the platform do so.

Mattel said it planned to have an iOS version by Christmas and that it had no plans to use any other platform besides Cardboard but Google, who wants to sell Android devices, would not announce an iOS version of Cardboard today. However by the above transitive property they effectively have with this Mattel launch.

There have, however, been DIY solutions for getting Google Cardboard up and running on iPhones using virtual reality iOS apps that are already for the most part compatible with the platform.

We have full coverage live from the event over on our sister site 9to5Google.