Facebook has just announced that it’s buying Oculus Rift for $US2 billion. Seriously.
“Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says. “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”
Oculus are equally chuffed. “We are excited to work with Mark and the Facebook team to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world,” Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR says in a PR release. “We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it’s only just the beginning.”
The deal is made up of around $US400 million in cash payouts, with the rest being made up of Facebook shares. It’s not a done deal yet; it’s expected to be finalised in Q2 2014.
UPDATE – Here’s a full statement from Mark Zuckerberg
I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology.
Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. For the past few years, this has mostly meant building mobile apps that help you share with the people you care about. We have a lot more to do on mobile, but at this point we feel we’re in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences.
This is where Oculus comes in. They build virtual reality technology, like the Oculus Rift headset. When you put it on, you enter a completely immersive computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away. The incredible thing about the technology is that you feel like you’re actually present in another place with other people. People who try it say it’s different from anything they’ve ever experienced in their lives.
Oculus’s mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences.
Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won’t be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there’s a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We’re going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.
But this is just the start. After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.
This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.
These are just some of the potential uses. By working with developers and partners across the industry, together we can build many more. One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.
Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together. I can’t wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us.
Comments
147 responses to “Facebook Buys Oculus Rift For $US2 Billion”
Huh? Eh?
*edit*
Minecraft for Oculus just got cancelled due to this deal.
http://au.ign.com/articles/2014/03/25/notch-minecraft-on-oculus-canceled-facebook-creeps-me-out?abthid=533204a8afa837a34200005f
You can read the full release here re the deal:
http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-facebook/
and also the comments from existing Facebook developers, not many are happy about it.
Well, they are extremely pissed would be closer to the truth. Makes for interesting reading.
Am I the only one who can’t see the comments? Did they delete/hide them…?
What they bought was patents. Broad patents. Now they have parity in this sector as microsoft, apple, google amoung others all now have a large set of VR patents, They wont be left behind if VR/glass or whatever it morphs into and becomes mainstay (eg microsofts idea to have headset office monitors). Till the contract term come out in the wash its all crystal ball gazing.
Until we see a lot more detail, it’s too early to say this is just about acquiring IP.
Will the retail Oculus now be somehow locked to Facebook or otherwise DRM-ified?
Will it be hackable and open?
Will Facebook allow anyone to develop for it, or only ‘selected partners’?
Will our use be monitored?
Will it be infested with ads?
Etc etc.
I would like to see a clear statement from the Oculus guys about all of the above as a matter of urgency.
The ONLY upside I can see is that FB might be able to use its muscle to get OR access to the best available screen technologies, which IIRC is the current biggest hurdle for the device. But that’s cold comfort really.
Ummm.. until we see a lot more detail, it’s too early to say this is more than just about acquiring IP.
Also, a clear statement from the Oculus guys “as a matter of urgency”? Are you a key stakeholder who has contributed the majority of the funding for the Oculus VR tech or something?
Gamer entitlement is thrown around a lot these days, but f*** me, your post stinks of it.
Well, that just ruined Oculus.
Yep, that was my first thought exactly.
“How can we fit more ads onto the heads up display?”
“How can we use what they are looking at for targetted adverts?”
“How can we link what they are doing live into their facebook feed?”
“How can we stream their friends facebook feeds into their goggles while they are playing?”
*sigh* Shame, this tech looked to be coming along nicely.
All the issues you brought up are related to application software.
That’s not what the Oculus Rift is about. It’s about hardware. The only software that they would do is for drivers and a development environment.
The closest that Facebook could influence the Oculus Rift would be to have the logo on the hardware. That’s OK by me, as long as the hardware is awesome. And you know, with the resources that Facebook could bring to the project, the hardware can only be awesome.
This is all a storm in a teacup, as far as I’m concerned.
Yep.
Heh, this was definitely my first sentiment. Still I think it is a good thing for VR probably. I have been excited but also fairly skeptical about VR, because I think that most of the popular games of today don’t lend themselves to VR well, and the games that do (sitting in a vehicle games) are not the most popular. Also fatigue with wearing big headset for hours. But this FB thing has reminded me that there is much more to VR than games. anything that creates momentum for VR is a good thing for the tech. Also, with a potential profit to be made on selling the hardware, maybe there will still be plenty of ways to use Oculus without needing adverts to pay for it. 🙂
Devs are already starting to cancel Oculus development: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/25/5547626/minecraft-oculus-vr-cancelled
My Favourite quote of the year so far “Facebook creeps me out.”.
Could not have said it better myself.
not devs, Just one notch and minecraft already has unofficial oculus support.
also the game doesn’t nearly take advantage of the best parts of it. other games which will be a lot more amazing with it have said that it doesn’t affect them, EvE Valkyrie for one and Star Citizen as another these are the sorts of games where the rift will truely shine.
Oculus is a classic ‘PC’ type innovation – a sweet piece of ‘offline’ hardware that is eminently hackable. And before it’s even born, it’s going to be bastardised into some kind of horrible mobile-integrated, privacy molesting piece of crap which will inevitably feature strong DRM and be as locked down as possible.
Very sad news.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Holy crap! I think this is the highest upvoted comment I’ve ever seen on Kotaku.
Is poking in VR really that important?
FARMVILLE! Have YOU ever wanted to pluck weeds in real life? Look at a chicken from underneath? Or simply spy on your neighbours farm? Well now you can! FARMVILLE!
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…
My. Exact. Reaction. 🙁
http://nooooooooooooooo.com/
I KEEP UPVOTING BUT THE NUMBERS WONT RISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, because the whole point of strapping on a pair of goggles and escaping to a virtual world is to have that virtual immersion completely broken by some idiot posting a selfie.
And don’t forget the ads, and suggested posts popping up all over the screen while your trying to just play a frickin’ game.
HI I SEE YOU LIKE THE OCCULUS! HAVE YOU TRIED 18+ DATING? YOU SHOULD ‘LIKE’ IT! AFTER THAT, YOU SHOULD ‘LIKE’ THIS SITE TOO! AND THIS! HAVE SOME RANDOM ADS! HERES SOME FRIENDS YOUVE NEVER MET!!!!!
*ugh*
AND REMEMBER THAT RANDOM GUY FROM HIGH SCHOOL WHO DIDN’T KNOW YOU OR EVEN GO TO SCHOOL IN THE DECADE YOU DID? NO? OK, WE’LL ASK AGAIN IN AN HOUR.
there goes the virtual neighbourhood 🙁
Not sure how to feel.
I wonder how much stake in his own company he had to give up to make that deal.
What. They should also stop giving away Facebook shares as payment. If I was the Oculus guys I’d be selling them off the instant I got them and Facebook value goes down even further
Yeahhh, shares for over half the value in a company with uncertain (and probably limited) future isn’t the best idea.
I don’t know the structure of Occulus but if the founders are still holding even 10% each they just put $40 million cash in their pockets.
The facebook shares are just a bonus with potential upside if they can really launch the VR revolution into the mainstream. Something that Occulus was always going to have trouble with.
Carmack works for Facebook.
God dammit. I hadn’t thought of that. This depresses me.
Possibly the most depressing part of this news…
I wonder how he feels about it?
SAY WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!
Was pretty excited about the Rift, but a Facebook owned Rift, NO THANK YOU.
Way to alienate your customers, just to make more money producing it for the masses.
Like the saying goes, Money talks.
Looks like it’ll be only a PS 4 VR unit for me.
To be fair, there’s some other technologies they’ve bought which they haven’t ‘perverted’ or changed. They just wanted to buy them out because they saw the potential in the tech making big bucks, outside the scope of what Facebook itself does.
Time will tell how this pans out. I did like how the project felt more open-source and cool though. Now it’s going to feel commercial. 🙁
It’s always been commercial – they were never going to give the things away for free 😛
Yeah! Stick it to the man by buying your VR unit from a huge multinational with a history of dubious DRM and one of the most locked down platforms in existence!
Soooo to protest a product being acquired by a big corporation (Facebook), you’re going to switch to the competition’s product, developed by another big corporation (Sony)?
At least sony will have gamers in mind.
I’m not really that upset that a big corporation took them over. I’m pissed off because it was Facebook.
perhaps a type of Oculus augmented reality will beat google glass
IMHO, this is a likely plan, trying to stay ahead of Google.
Well on the one hand, they’ll have a heap of money on their hands for development so who knows what they’ll be able to come up with now.
On the other hand, it’s facebook…
And with facebook behind them I’d imagine it’d be a lot easier to get the general public into VR. Might be a very beneficial push to VR in general.
But still, it’s facebook…
Nothing good will come out of this.
Here’s the statement from Zuckerberg
As much as everyone here is foreseeing the death of Oculus, there’s always the chance that Facebook don’t go full-retard and are simply trying to expand their portfolio, as any smart company should be doing.
I’d much prefer to wait and see what changes come of this, instead of joining in on some pointless circlejerk based on the grounds of “because Facebook”.
Not anymore.
Also not anymore :p
By “changes”, you mean devs pulling out of the Oculus programme?
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/25/5547626/minecraft-oculus-vr-cancelled
I suspect this will be the first of many.
Yeh, because when talking about devs in general, Notch surely sets the standard. /s
Seriously, that’s a very reactionary tweet from Notch, not based on much other reason than what I pointed out in my comment – “because Facebook”. I will be on the lookout for any devs who pull out due to some rational reasons such as drastic changes Facebook makes to the company.
Read his blog post for more detailed reasoning than you’ll find in 140 characters:
http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-the-world/
I have and I don’t agree with the stance he’s taken. Instead of wanting to see how Facebook handles the acquisition, whether or not they keep the current teams and employees in place at Oculus and if they maintain or improve/worsen support for indie devs, he’s just predetermined how they’ll go about it based on their previous actions.
Again, he elaborates but it becomes clear at the end of the blog post that his reasons eventually fall down to “Because it’s Facebook”.
Umm isn’t predicting what someone / a company will do based off their previous actions the only way you should be predicting something?
I think it’s perfectly logical to say “based off this companies previous actions I do not trust them and therefore will not support them”.
Absolutely, but I’d much rather wait and see if they’ve learned anything or handle it differently as opposed to acting on predictions and suspicions, which is what Notch has done. Notch has the right to do what he’s done, I just don’t agree with it. Maybe it’s because I have faith in some of the brilliant minds that are still part of the Oculus team.
For one, I really want to see what Carmack says and whether or not he’ll continue working. From what I can see so far, the Oculus team remains unchanged after the acquisition, so I still have faith in the future of Oculus. Carmack would have no qualms for leaving if his goals and ideals don’t align with the new owners.
Yeah true.
The optimist would say “give them a chance to change” the pessimist “no they had their chance I won’t give them another”. All depends on your point of view.
The fact that the team remains unchanged is a positive.
But I also can’t help feel disquiet. I don’t like a lot of things facebook has done. Heck they can’t even get right the design of their site! The changes they have made to the their app are also terrible,
And I can seem them really pushing VR in a way that makes them money from their core business which is really ad revenue.
In the grand scheme of things though I am not a developer and don’t have an Oculus Rift so I am happy to wait and see what happens from all of this. 🙂
There is some truth in what you say. With the actual “Facebook” part of Facebook hemorrhaging money, they are probably looking to diversify and gather some revenue streams for when facebook silently dies like an unwanted relative in a nursing home…
aw I made myself sad….
Anyway… I imagine the income from patent ownership alone is probably worth $2B if only for the patent licensing …
“facebook”
“don’t go full-retard”
I’m sorry, but those two phrases do not belong together. 😛
Hey Kotaku, April 1st isn’t for another week!
Initial reaction: That sucks.
More thought out reaction: Facebook has no credibility, so it hurts a bit, but it shouldn’t actually change the direction they’re taking with the technology and it probably gives Oculus VR the best chance it’s got to go mainstream – which would mean further improvements. What’s good for the mainstream is good for gamers. Let’s hope they give them the resources they need to get this product as good as it can be, and otherwise stay out of their business.
I wonder how Carmack feeks about it. As long as he’s still on board I have faith.
Since when?
Since always.. okay, maybe, “since often”.
Oculus only exists because mainstream mobile phone technology has allowed the screens to be produced at a reasonable cost. The same thing could be said for how the Wii’s mainstream success brought back a renewed focus on motion controls, which in turn led to more accurate and cheaper accelerometers.
Mainstream support means more money, more competition, more improvements. If the VR stays in the domain of hardcore gamers, it will improve only at a much slower rate than if it becomes widely adopted.
It also kinda means beloved IPs getting poached and recycled, but not as lovingly-crafted remakes or sequels, but as wallet-raping mobile tap-and-wait ‘games’.
I agree with the general sentiment that having a larger section of society consider themselves ‘gamers’ (even if they aren’t enthusiasts like those geeks of us who have always considered ourselves ‘Gamers’ – capital G) could be a good thing in terms of higher investment and involvement pushing innovation and cultural acceptance, but you only have to look at how that’s worked out in the past to see the bastardry of successful mobile monetization tactics creeping into our core gaming experiences to see why people would be leery of welcoming this.
Or, I don’t know if you were around for the early days of the world wide web, but there was a definite difference between the indie/community spirit of knowledge-sharing of the early days compared to the corporate clamps that now pervade almost every aspect of everything you do online.
What you’re saying about the indie community and spirit of knowledge sharing could be very true. It’s interesting how Valve freely helped Oculus’ R&D in regards to the screen technology (to minimise the blur), and expected nothing in return. I don’t know if they would have been so generous if Facebook were already involved at that stage (though Valve are pretty generous in general as a company). It definitely changes the dynamic.
Perhaps I’m just trying to see the positive side, but I just don’t know if a product like the Oculus could survive more than one or two product cycles at a reasonable cost if it didn’t have mainstream appeal. I think the Oculus always had an uphill battle for gaining acceptance, it’s a really niche product – even among hardcore gamers there was a fair amount of scepticism. Time will tell how much Facebook changes the direction that Oculus would have gone without them, but perhaps optimistically I’m expecting that at least initially the only change will be Oculus having more support to develop and market their product. In the long run I think this will be good for VR.
Now, if John Carmack tweets “This is not the company I want to work for, I’m out!” then I’ll start being worried for Oculus.
I think the Rift would’ve been just fine, because just about every piece of reporting I’ve seen on it from previewers has been, “Holy shit you guys, when they actually release a consumer version of this and some games, the world isn’t going to know what hit it!” It’s seemed like a pretty much universally-accepted ‘sure thing’, and Facebook are pretty smart to get in on the ground floor with that huge buyout.
Yes it will become mainstream. Facebook mainstream which means the majority of people will likely see it as a gimmick and a passing fad instead of a possible future, potentially harming alternatives like Sony and could set back VR pretty massively.
Possibly.
Mainstream killed gaming imo
Is gaming dead? I had no idea! Here I am with more games than I can play – hardcore, deep, sophisticated games that don’t appeal to a mainstream audience, stacking up in my pile of shame!
The mainstream games don’t stop the niche games from getting made. Candy Crush didn’t kill Dark Souls. Minecraft didn’t kill Dwarf Fortress.
There’s a real “hipster” undercurrent in a lot of the sentiment around Oculus’s acquisition. There’s a lot of good reasons to be concerned about Facebook buying Oculus, but VR going mainstream isn’t one of them.
Well FB clearly wont be using this for gaming, but having ‘Virtual’ meetings with other people in cyber space will change the world, imagine having 30 people who normally have a big office to go to, all working from home connected via oculus, saving money on fuel, electricity, clothes etc…
Some people already did this in Second Life, didn’t catch on tho.
it will be a MUCH more immersive experience, check this video out and skip to 11:23,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp6C0q4sCks hear what one of the greatest physicists in the world has to say, i’d recommend watching the whole thing if you have time 🙂
thanks
I do hope that FaceBook does not pervert this.
OR REQUIRE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT!
Well at least there’s the Sony VR thing…
hopefullly its pc compatible.
Wow, didnt see this coming
As much as i hate facebook, having them backing the VR project will produce epic results in an amazing time frame
I agree this is a great thing for Oculus Dev’s and im sure it means more people will be gaming via VR in the future, why does everyone hate this? This isn’t the only VR headset in development
It’s more an issue of trust than it is about anything else. There’s no doubt that Facebook has the capability of pumping money into the VR project, but like all companies they do this with an expectation of getting money back in return. People just don’t know (or want to know) how Facebook will go around achieving this when the product hits the shelves. It’s a social media website, and hasn’t got much of a track-record of making money outside of user data (allegedly anyway) and advertising.
I see your point about business’s focusing only on profit but i think were seeing a change in this dynamic, look at EA changing how there games are made to make the public happy, Bioware changing Mass effect endings, M$ going back on there DRM policies etc… If FB does something the majority doesn’t like, you simply just buy the competitors VR headset, Sony has one and M$ allegedly has one in the works too, eventually companies are starting to realize the consumer in the end holds all the power, their wallet.
I tire of large companies snapping up so many of the good smaller tech companies. Instead of having a marketplace of many companies each operating moderately independently, we have a marketplace where some companies get successful (and others go broke), and then mammoth companies buy them.
Basis -> Intel.
Nest -> Google.
Oculus -> Facebook.
Burstly (TestFlight) -> Apple.
WhatsApp, Instagram, etc not such a big deal, because they are really not doing anything particularly novel, but genuinely innovative companies are just getting devoured by corporate monstrosities.
What happened to licensing technology rather than just buying the company outright.
I was indifferent about this from the beginning; now I’m plain disinterested.
Oh…that’s…a sad start to the day. I was looking forward to it…but now…who knows what crap will be bundled in with it.
Oh fuck this. It makes me want to cancel my pre-order of the new prototype.
I signed on as an OR developer, not Facebook.
I honestly can’t support that company.
Yep. I pre-ordered DK2 within hours (and have a DK1). I’m very close to cancelling and moving on/back to other things.
I don’t see the synergy to this. What good does it do VR’s future (which Luckey Palmer and Oculus have been promoting) to have backing by a data-greedy social network? Yes, the cash will help them compete in the future market but in one (sell-out imo) deal, they’ve warped the future of VR and all it could have been.
On the other side, this is massive news for crowdfunding. From starting off as a relatively small crowdfunded project to being bought out by one of the biggest names in the business world? Good stuff to see, even if a lot of people will now see it as being in the wrong hands now
My first reaction was “**** this” but after having a think about it, I’m starting to be swayed. I mean, $2 billlion is a shitload of money, and can only mean good things in terms of development resources for one. Finding broader applications for VR technology means finding a wider audience and can only help it in terms of uses and reach, with more people interested in using it for things other than just gaming. More people will be interested in buying it besides gamers, meaning more people will accept it rather than look down on it as a fad.
And come on, let’s be reasonable, just because Facebook buys Oculus doesnt mean that every single game being developed for the platform is going to to just stop (**edit**: just read Minecraft for oculus just got cancelled. dammit), and it doesnt mean facebook will own all the games that are being developed for it, and hammer ads into them. on that note, I personally have never found ads to be a problem for me on facebook….
That’s what I think.
Worse case scenario (not likely to happen): Facebook fucks up Oculus, makes you log in to Facebook each time you want to use the device, bombards you with ads, makes it a proprietary Facebook device so you can’t use it in other games – what happens then? The tech still get’s better, and then a competitor will come out and cater to the hardcore audience again, piggy-backing on all the R&D Facebook poured into VR already. Oculus isn’t going to be the only player in the game.
Best case scenario: VR takes off with the mainstream – Facebook money removes all restrictions on where the want to take the tech, and the Oculus VR becomes a much better product for it. It’s still completely unrestricted to gamers who want to use it for hardcore experiences, but the non-gamers enjoy it too which removes the stigma and creates a future with a lot of cool VR in it. It’s so ubiquitous, that heaps of games focus on a cool VR experience.
Most likely scenario: Facebook pushes VR for a while to the mainstream, but it never really takes off for the average person. It still has a dedicated gaming crowd that supports the tech, which is still reasonable big business with gaming continuing to crow. In which case, nothing really changes. VR is cool enough that a decent amount of games ship with a good VR experience.
This might be a bad thing for Oculus, but it’s a great thing for VR in general.
It’s $400M of real money and the rest is facebook toilet paper, err I mean stocks.
Nope, that’s enough internet for one day , and it’s only 9.30am.
Wow! Big news.
First step – change the name to something someone who had sex once would find less embarrassing.
How about ‘The Facebook iGoggles’?
Brilliant!
A thousand times this!
Will the Kickstarter backers get a piece of that 2B?
this is what makes me sick, all the people that invested in one way or another……. testers the most underpaid of all ……. and missing out on 2billion,,,
No because they didn’t invest in a company, they donated money to a project in exchange for a prearranged reward. Nothing more.
If anyone thinks otherwise they’re as deluded as a guy who thinks Metallica owes him royalties because they went to their first gig.
Never thought about that analogy before, I love it!
The kickstarter backers didn’t help establish the company or the technology.
Go look at the kickstarter – it was just to get dev kits manufactured and ‘out in the wild’ for anyone interested in getting one to play with. I can’t see how the kickstarter project has any major relevance to this buyout news.
what about the guys that wrote scripts huds and guis for games such as skyrim and ESO? independently forging the way of the platform
They did that out of their own pocket then.
That’s like expecting people who wrote free stuff for Android phones to get a cut of Google’s profits.
notch wrote the feeling best:
And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.
Then WTF did he think was going to happen to the company.
If Notch had made an investment, he should have insisted on being a proper Venture capitalist with equity. If he doesn’t have en equity stake, then how he feels is irrelevant.
I can see why people are displeased… and are like noooo not facebook
One step closer to the Holo Band Technology from caprica
well fuck… well that was a quick way to have most gamers lose interest in your product.
incoming oculus farmville. sigh.
Wow a lot of hate for Facebook. I’m not fan of Facebook (havent really been that active with it the last couple of years), but will reserve judgement until I see what they actually do with it.
Imagine if they were to buy some robotics company, then we might have a world similar to that in the movie “Surrogates”.
I think the reaction is mostly this way because of the standard of games on Facebook.
I still have a sliver of faith aslong as carmack stays on board, But I’m expecting headbang controlled 3d flappy bird with microtransactions hand having 1/3rd of the device dedicated to adds. either way I was planing to buy this at launch, now I wont.
inb4virtualsexwithfriendslist
In terms of tech development, its not terrible because Facebook has the massive amount of money behind them to make it great. Software wise though.. It’ll be terrible, filled with adverts, games with micro transactions everywhere. Which wouldn’t be a good precedent to set for VR.
I was very tempted to purchase the new dev kit, but not now. Maybe another independent will stand up and get noticed?
Good on them for securing a stable parent company, worst case scenario we get an option for facebook integration built into the headset. But considering you need a pc to run it there’s not much they could do for forced implementation of ads and stuff. They’re probably just buying it for the technology. I’m sure facebook has the financial pull to find more suppliers for the Rift’s needed parts that halted production. So I don’t really see a downside to this
The needed parts were only for a devkit that was already discontinued. It was having zero impact on the company, the commercial product or the V2 devkit.
Okay, I’m willing to try and suspend my usual crushing cynicism and wait to see how it turns out commercially. If they sell it as hardware with a decent level of driver support, grand. If, at any point anywhere along the process from purchase to running a game, a facebook account is required then they can get fucked.
fast forward 2 years – ‘you must sign in to facebook to view jerry’s apartment’
FUCK
Exactly THIS!
Oh, fuck.
Well that’s the end of oculus for anything useful… Another great strategic move by Zuck!
This is why we can’t have nice things…
Fuck you Facebook!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
It will be a cold day in hell before I sell you my details to use your shitty products!
Farewell, Occulus Rift, we hardly knew ye…
Is it April 1?
I’d like to see an article analysing the massive backlash from this.
The comments on the Oculus developer site are amazing in their number and their disbelief and even outrage. I would bet that Oculus weren’t expecting quite this level of response.
Especially since the overwhelming number of responses are posted *from* Facebook accounts. They are unhappy with Oculus getting into bed with Facebook, yet they themselves are not willing to cut the FB umbilical cord.
Backers and developers seem to feel not just disappointed, but betrayed.
I’m guessing it is mostly that this was a Kickstarter project, that a lot of the development so far has been open source, and people loved the idea of the young guy in his garage, realising the lost dream of VR and bringing it *directly* to the masses, with no big corporation pulling the strings.
Built by a gamer, for gamers.
Kotaku, write me a thoughtful article on the severity of the backlash, I want to read it!
🙂
(Fair disclosure: I’m not on Facebook as I don’t agree with how that company handles its users. I was an Oculus Rift developer up until today).
I MAD BRO!
This is going to gimp VR big time.
Fuck this.
Fuck that.
Fuck everything!
To all developers you now need to embed facebook feed and ad support for all your games, this is manditory, failure to do so will result in a non working game until it is. we are facebook and we want those ads.
Aaaaaaaand Oculus is no longer cool now.
Thanks, Zuckerberg.
Why does Facebook need Oculus Rift? I was thinking of pre-ordering one of those new prototypes but i’m not giving any of my money to Facebook.
Glad I picked buying a PS4 over building an oculus rift minded gaming pc.
Well, I can’t pretend that I ever cared much for the Oculus Rift, so I’m not too troubled. But this maybe a sign that Facebook is in trouble. What does the Oculus Rift and Facebook have to do with one another? Nothing, as far as I’m aware. They may be trying to make it into a competitor for Google Glass, but I doubt many people are going to be willing to strap a very big set of goggles to their face when they go outside at all times.
I just don’t understand what Zuckerberg is planning to do with this purchase, other than trying to desperately diversify his business to survive the inevitable social media bubble collapse (and we all know it’s coming).
You put it well there.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/25/facebook-stock-slides-in-after-hour-trading-following-acquisition-of-oculus-rift/
Swift justice.
Should never have happened in the first place.
There’s a thought, wonder if that supermarket VR ad thing from the other day was just a coincidence of timing or somehow related
Not gonna lie. My immediate reaction was: “THIS IS SO VERY VERY BAD FOR ANYONE WHO LIKES GAMES.”
If only because Facebook itself has been so very very bad for anyone who likes games. What with all the games-making publishers wondering why they’re sinking hundreds of millions into games development when they could sink hundreds of thousands instead and get just as much profit from mobile games. Because those are games too, right? Right? That’s what ‘gamers’ want, because that’s what ‘gamers’ are buying on their mobiles right? Those are two completely fucking different markets and demographics? Games are just games, no?
it’d be like GM buying Ford.
Massive shitstorm.
Will it have a dislike button?
Weird that I decided to deactivate my Facebook this morning and now I see this…
So it’s YOUR fault!
GET HIM EVERYONE!!!
Haha! Well played mate 😉
Farmville never looked so real!
this is because Sony revealed they started VR before occulus and occulus freaked out.
Even less interested now FB is involved.
Catch 22; More money = better hardware….. But, it IS Facebook 🙁
http://www.reddit.com/user/palmerluckey
Palmer Luckey, one of the founders is confident that none of the reactionary responses will happen. Read it, and feel better.
Dafuq?!?!…Would have been better if EA had got it…..that’s saying something.
Dear lord…it’s happening, it’s really happening.
The segregation of those who refuse to be “plugged in”, retain free will and hide in the shadows. Then those who remain within their octopus lift, living out their lives with tubes up their noses and I.V tubes hanging off them, jacked in 24-7.
Zuckerburger doesn’t want this for GAMES!!!! He want’s to control the population!
As the Bentusi say ” No…We will not be bound!”
Friends, resist!!!
“They control life, squatingtiger, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what they do and will turn against them. But they create human nature, Men are infinitely malleable.” =P
Talk about the worst news ever.
I feel violated.
RIP Oculus Rift.
I bet John Carmack’s thinking “what the fuck have I done.. I closed Armadillo Aerospace and left id for this?”
What about the poor Kickstarter investors?? (donators)
Bet they be mighty pissed right now!
Be nice if half the FB money spread out to the people who got this off the ground.
What about them? We got what was agreed upon – donate to the kickstarter, get a dev kit/t-shirt/whatever else was at the level you pledged. The transaction was over once the rewards were in backers’ hands, they don’t owe us squat now.
This is nonsense, i don’t even want for my usual life to be connected with anyone. Let alone share my information. I don’t even use Facebook, does that mean i have to make a damn account to use this thing? sigh.
Surely this was more than a $2bn dollar idea/technology? If it’s going to to change the world why sell it off early to a huge corporation before you’ve even sold a unit? Didn’t FB just buy Whatsapp for $19bn?!