I don't know how many of you know this, the news is almost a month old, but I haven't seen a post about it yet so I assume there are at least some few folks around here who haven't heard of it.

I'm going to assume you all know what the Oculus Rift is, and of course, everyone knows what Facebook is.

Well, on March 25th, Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement.

Of course, the gamers and kickstarter backers and VR enthusiasts alike freaked out. The Kickstarter Community behind the Rift saw a massive wave of people asking for their money back.

From calmer heads, this has been the general reaction.

Still, I'm wary, and to be honest I'm one of those people who just hate Facebook on principle. I'm hoping they don't fuck this up, but I'm expecting them to do so because that's what Facebook does.

Sadly, if, in a few years, there are viable contenders to the Oculus, I'm most likely to side with them over a Facebook-Owned Oculus.

 

Seems like an odd acquisition - virtual reality and social networking don't immediately appear like they combine well. I was under the impression that corporate MO these days is for businesses to specialise - lots of corporations have been dumping holdings that are unrelated to their central industry.

Maybe they're thinking of making a Google Glass competitor with the rift technology.

 

From what Zuckerberg said, it seems more like he wants the Rift to become both entertainment and communications/social technology, like smartphones but on your face making you feel you're somewhere else entirely.

 

Patrick Klepek (of GiantBomb) wrote an article summing up his thoughts on it. I thought it was pretty illuminating, even if he doesn't really have any information we don't.

If it does result in the Oculus being released as a higher quality product priced at cost, then that's fucking spectacular, so this could be a good thing. Maybe. It's best to reserve judgment until more comes out.

 

I think, based on conversations with people in the tech industry, that this is more of a snatch and grab type strategy. Companies like Facebook are big enough that they can afford to throw out $2 billion on an idea which could pull trillions a few years from now. At the broader level, a lot of big tech companies do this - they diversify to be better prepared for whatever the next big thing is.

Right now Mobile/ Table functionality (and the smart devices associated with them) is a big deal. Facebook is just trying to stay ahead of the curve with this acquisition.

On the smaller scale, I don't really know what this means for gaming or whatever. Forbes put out this article just under a week ago.

One of the key passages was:

which is a pretty good assessment. I think the response so far is comparable to when any independent, potentially ground-break start-up gets snatched. People are worried that the new owners (so to speak) won't understand the studio, their goals, or their design aspirations.

For now it looks like the OR team will still have autonomy.

 

Initially I disliked this takeover but it makes sense from the standpoint of Facebook. Virtual reality is probably the next big thing, granted it may take a few years, and the Oculus offers a great entry to that market. And you only have to look at Second Life to see how social networking and virtual reality connects.

And lets face it... two billion is nothing for a company like Facebook considering they can secure their gateway to such an important technology. (Just think of the patents etc.)

@ Taure
Both Google and Facebook have a lot of money "lying around" and so have to invest it somewhere to get a use out of it (economy 101). Both are lead by men with a "vision" and both know that the potential of new, untested markets can be immense because they emerged from them themselves.

 

Old news is old. But I guess Facebook bought it because of of the many future possibilities of VR.

 

I'm already imagining a real-life Ready Player One future

 

So long as Facebook doesn't sell everything a person looks at, or "likes" in the Rift like the do with current fb content to advertisers, I don't think it'll matter much to me.