Games By James Plafke Mar. 25, 2014 5:50 pm
We’re sorry to report that Facebook just threw two billion bucks at Oculus VR and now owns the Oculus Rift. Some of us, however, are ecstatic to report that John Carmack now works for Facebook because we’re fans of extremely funny situations.
The two billion dollar sum is composed of $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock. In a post reporting the news, Mark Zuckerberg himself notes that, for now, Facebook will allow Oculus to operate independently and remain focused on gaming; however, in the future Facebook will bring the Oculus Rift into many other arenas. Zuckerberg specifically quoted having a face-to-face consultation with a doctor on the other side of the world, or enjoying court-side seats at a sporting event without actually having to pay for a full-price ticket.
This could, obviously, go either way for the Oculus team. On the one hand, the Rift has been floating around as a development kit for almost two years — a company can only release so many dev kits before all excitement for a product has died down and it’s considered some form of vaporware. The optimistic would suggest that now, with Facebook’s staggering financial weight thrown behind the Rift, the Oculus team could progress at a much faster pace. The pessimistic — a stance that Twitter would have you believe has been taken by the overwhelming majority of gamers — would suggest that Facebook doesn’t care about gaming, and now will put the clamps on the Rift as a core gaming experience in order to focus on other applications.
Back at GDC this year, Sony showed off its own VR headset for console gaming, Project Morpheus, and the hands-on impressions from press at the show stated the kit was an impressive, comfortable, supremely functional piece of hardware, already rivaling the Rift. Oculus quickly and conveniently announced the final form of its dev kit. Considering Sony’s massive resources, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if the company could actually release the Morpheus before the Oculus Rift dropped. However, now that Oculus has Facebook’s massive resources at its disposal, the Rift could finally,*finally drag itself out of the dev kit beta and prop itself up on store shelves.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if this acquisition bodes well for Oculus — and if John Carmack quits within the next couple of days.
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The two billion dollar sum is composed of $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock. In a post reporting the news, Mark Zuckerberg himself notes that, for now, Facebook will allow Oculus to operate independently and remain focused on gaming; however, in the future Facebook will bring the Oculus Rift into many other arenas. Zuckerberg specifically quoted having a face-to-face consultation with a doctor on the other side of the world, or enjoying court-side seats at a sporting event without actually having to pay for a full-price ticket.
This could, obviously, go either way for the Oculus team. On the one hand, the Rift has been floating around as a development kit for almost two years — a company can only release so many dev kits before all excitement for a product has died down and it’s considered some form of vaporware. The optimistic would suggest that now, with Facebook’s staggering financial weight thrown behind the Rift, the Oculus team could progress at a much faster pace. The pessimistic — a stance that Twitter would have you believe has been taken by the overwhelming majority of gamers — would suggest that Facebook doesn’t care about gaming, and now will put the clamps on the Rift as a core gaming experience in order to focus on other applications.
Back at GDC this year, Sony showed off its own VR headset for console gaming, Project Morpheus, and the hands-on impressions from press at the show stated the kit was an impressive, comfortable, supremely functional piece of hardware, already rivaling the Rift. Oculus quickly and conveniently announced the final form of its dev kit. Considering Sony’s massive resources, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if the company could actually release the Morpheus before the Oculus Rift dropped. However, now that Oculus has Facebook’s massive resources at its disposal, the Rift could finally,*finally drag itself out of the dev kit beta and prop itself up on store shelves.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if this acquisition bodes well for Oculus — and if John Carmack quits within the next couple of days.
More...
