Facebook buys Oculus

[d_stilgar]

Well, this is really frustrating. I was really really really looking forward to this becoming a product, but now I think I'll pay more attention to what Sony and MS are working on. My hope is that Oculus can operate independently long enough for the first few models to come out before facebook demands a re-branded thing for them.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/25/facebook-to-buy-oculus-vr-maker-of-the-rift-headset-for-around-2b-in-cash-and-stock/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/03/25/facebook-buys-oculus-virtual-reality-gaming-startup-for-2-billion/

[OvRiDe]

I was pretty surprised on why in the world would Facebook be interested in Oculus and/or VR. But really is it bad for Oculus?

It actually might be one of the best things that could have happened to them. When you really think about, it, Oculus has been around for what around 3 years? And they have yet to deliver a product to the market. Sure they have 2 dev kits out there, and after wearing one.. it is pretty cool even for a dev kit. Which leads me to believe they were running pretty close to the bone on capital. Now that Facebook owns them.. they have access to massive funding.

Also if you look at the history of Facebook's acquisitions, such as Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.. etc .. they pretty much left those companies alone to operate as an independents. They didn't go in and mix it up by firing all the top people and replacing them. Sure I imagine old Zuck and his boys are going to have plenty of input for them, but that doesn't mean they are going to stop its progress.

It may end up being great for both them and the consumers out there, like us, waiting for an actual product to hit the market.

I still don't know what plans Facebook has for Oculus that relates to its current businesses. I said something to CJ earlier about buying an Oculus Rift from Facebooks seems like if McDonald bought a car company. Would you buy a car from McDonalds? And he said "Nope, but then again 10 years ago would you have bought a phone from Google?"

So I guess we will just have to wait and see, it might end up being a pretty good thing.

[Twigsoffury]

Well i'd like to think facebook sees the coast line, and its ships coming in to port..permanently.

and they really need a new ship to set sail on, especially with a new idea that stands to make a revolution in the gaming industry. I'm sure Zanga has seen what sort of money quality gaming can bring to the bank.. and personally from what I've seen... i'd totally use an Oculus device. and with facebook having jesus who knows how much disposable income... it's a good gamble on the future ^_^

also i bet the creators are partying like its 1999 this very moment

[Omega]

I'm glad to see some semblance of sense here on TBCS.

I've seen a LOT of people posting about the death of Oculus and all this other crap just because of the Facebook acquisition.

OvR hit the nail on the head though -- Facebook has been notoriously hands-off in the operations of their acquisitions. Let's hope that especially for Oculus, that trend continues.

I say if Facebook keeps their hands out of the mix and lets Oculus continue doing their development as they were, it's a massive benefit. Huge financial power behind them, and also a much larger marketing platform.

Plus, 2 Billion is a ****load of money. Facebook would be unwise to meddle too much because if it's done right, and at a good price point (hell even the dev kit is pretty well priced for what it is), Oculus is set up to rake in the money bigtime. If done poorly (read: if Facebook meddles around too much), they may as well just light that money on fire.

It actually kind of upsets me to see people so up in arms over this, especially high profile people like Notch. People with even a basic understanding of business should know that an acquisition does not necessarily preclude a company from operating as it did before. All it means at a fundamental level is that the research and products made are the responsibility of a parent company, and that the money flow goes a little further uphill. It doesn't necessarily mean that the parent company is immediately going to clear out the old team, take over, and meddle with it.

Ultimately I'm excited to see what comes out of this. Hell, I was debating buying a dev kit just the other day because I think it would be friggin awesome to play games in VR.

[d_stilgar]

I've been thinking about the new dev kit, but the Oculus guys keep saying to wait for the consumer version, so I think I'll wait.

The biggest benefit I hope we see from this is that we get a finished product to market sooner. I'm sure the Oculus guys were worried about the big-capital guys like Sony and MS running them over with a copy-cat product. Hopefully the acquisition helps them compete better.

Facebook has said that eventually they want something tailored to the FB crowd. I don't use facebook and doubt I ever will, so I'll defend Notch a little bit when he says FB gives him the heebie-jeebies. I feel the same way.

In any case, now that I no longer view it as the underdog vs the big corporations, I'm willing to look at Oculus' competition with a little less bias.

[nevermind1534]

According to Palmer (facebook comment on a post about it), Notch wasn't really very involved in any development for the rift:


He had the Rift for a year and had not even tried the Minecraft mod (which is really good), much less done any exploration work. I think Notch is a super cool guy, but it is really easy to "cancel" a project that was never started as an out.

I find that fairly believable. He probably thought it was a cool toy, but never got around to doing much of anything with it himself.


The team at Oculus seems fairly excited about having money to hire more people and move a little faster on getting a consumer product to market.

[Airbozo]

I'm torn on this.

On the one hand I like to see the underdog get a leg up (money wise) on the competition and get a chance to produce a good product. On the other hand I agree with Notch that FB gives me the creeps and I tend to stay away from anything they touch.

I also don't get the comment about them creating this technology from scratch. HMD's have been around for a very long time and the technology has been refined over and over but never found a place in the market outside of big design houses, military simulators or university experiments. When I was running the VR labs at SGI, we had several models come though for testing and evaluation. Even some early prototypes from a Sony owned company. The best ones by far were the models from Virtual Research Systems (http://www.virtualresearch.com/). I still have a VR4 model given to me by one of the owners. Lego actually used the same model for their Virtual Construction Engine back in the mid 90's.

Admittedly I am not an expert on the Rift and I will be watching how this plays out and what it does for the technology in general and how the competition responds. Facebook buying Oculus might just be a good thing for the VR headset industry as a whole since it "legitimizes" the technology.

[nevermind1534]

I think I get what they mean. I remember Palmer posting pictures of various HMDs that he got on Facebook, so he knows well that such technology existed. What they did create is the design, the code, and have somewhat fulfilled the vision of creating an affordable motion tracking HMD. Or even just that the company itself was built up from nothing.


Somebody screencapped that Facebook comment from Palmer and posted it on reddit. Notch did give an explanation/response, and his tweet makes a bit more sense now after reading it.

http://kotaku.com/minecraft-on-oculus-rift-would-have-been-a-free-demo-n-1553257705

If Mojang was going to do a free demo because Oculus was an independent startup, I can understand why they'd cancel it. I'd also be a little less inclined to do any acts of charity if that was the intent.