Virtual Reality

[VR46]

Nice price, and specs and weight reduction. Hope Sony take note of all these things.

[Duncan James Waugh]

Yeah very nice progress, going to be a must buy for me once the final consumer specs are locked down.

[dataDave]

... and if any developer can come up with anything interesting, outside of it being a FPS player.

[eastyy]

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2014/03/25/facebook-to-acquire-oculus-vr-for-2-billion

i really do not think that is good

[originalbadboy]

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2014/03/2...-for-2-billion


i really do not think that is good

LOL .. Oh well ... I do feel sorry for anyone who has sunk money into it though.

[Neon Ignition]

I might be missing something but it seems like a really dumb purchase for a really dumb amount of money. As good as the word of mouth has been for Oculus Rift, it hasn't been $2bn worth's good. Even when they talk about the non-gaming applications for its future, even if they were lucrative, it's not like they've bought the concept either, we've already seen very similar products are coming from companies like Sony who are much better positioned to bring it to market.

I dunno, on the face of it it seems to **** in the face of the whole kickstarter and public groundwork, like they've gained some momentum and cashed in before any trouble sets in. Fair play, for $2bn I would too. Maybe there's a grander scheme at work, it just seems like a bad fit.

[Dogg Thang]

Well I'm sure Facebook had some hands on playtime rather than having to go on word of mouth and it obviously excited them. Hard to see it becoming the standard though, which it would have to be to justify the cost.

Something doesn't sit right about the Kickstarter element for me too. It's not like this is wrong or couldn't happen but it does hammer home Kickstarter is effectively investment in an idea without any of the payoffs of actually investing in an idea. Maybe they'll send all the backers something nice as a reward. They really should because this likely would have been nothing without the support of a lot of people on Kickstarter.

[Asura]

Ugh, I'll be looking at Sony's headset then. Notice Zuckerberg is already saying crap like "it's the next big social platform!".

I'd put on a VR headset to get away from the stresses and strains of real life, and Facebook is most definitely one of those things.

[VR46]

Yep can only see this ending badly sadly. What a shame.

[bash]

Maybe Carmack helped showcase a new killer doom'esque FPS game experience?

[kryss]

https://twitter.com/Boogie2988/status/448606994480390144

[Brad]

And vr gaming is handed to Sony.

[Neon Ignition]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-25-facebook-buys-oculus-vr

Marcus 'Notch' Persson has cancelled a version of Minecraft that was in the works for Oculus Rift in response to the buyout.

[Asura]

This seems to have caused a ****storm in all the usual places; you'd think the Earth had moved.

I suppose it was always going to happen, though. If you were going to draw a Venn diagram of "The core gamer audience who supported the Kickstarter" and "people who don't like playing Facebook games" you'd probably have two VERY closely aligned circles.

[Resonance]

These kinds of acquisitions have been going on for a while. Newscorp bout myspace, not because it could help their core business but because it was the 'next huge thing'. Facebook had similar buyout offers too. I think that many big companies know that the success of their platforms is only for a short while and want to purchase anything they could see as replacing them.

Oculus in some ways is not a particularly lucrative product. The idea is not new and worst of all, even if they make the best product ever, they have no actual viable platform to distribute games. At best they could license the technology or sell headsets. But currently the oculus is designed for a platform that is in decline (the PC)

However big companies want to own the ways in which we interact with data, be that mobile, desktop or whatever is next. VR is coming so I think purchasing oculus is more of a preventative measure to own part of what is next even if facebook have nothing really useful to offer. Google with its android platform would have been a much better fit.