Holocube surprised us — a lot. It's a VR accessory for any Google Cardboard user, made by the company responsible for one of the most colorful Google Cardboard clones you'll see on shelves in stores. Holocube doesn't require Merge VR to use it — in fact it doesn't even require an Android phone. Truly anything that runs Cardboard apps can take advantage of this new accessory. What does it do, you ask? In a way, it does whatever you want it to.
Holocube uses the camera on your phone to turn this little cube into an Augmented Reality playground. In the brief demonstrations Merge was giving, Holocube could turn into a heart, a brain, and a mini Minecraft world you could rotate in your hand and populate as you see fit. Merge claims you can do just about anything with Holocube if you're willing to write the apps for it, and their demonstrations suggest that's going to be fairly easy to do.
The idea is to combine VR and AR with this simple cube, and to pull this off Merge is reaching out to developers with the promise of an open API and a significant user base. Considering Merge is one of the few simple VR headsets that found a spot on shelves at Best Buy, there's a good chance they have the numbers to prove there's plenty of people out there ready to treat Holocube like an impulse buy and jump on it when released later this year. That means it's likely to have a healthy selection of apps and games to go with it when you're finally able to buy one yourself.
