Yes, I just really dislike facebook, so I hate to see them aquiring something i was really excited about.
Also from the article:
> 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.
Nah, I'd rather not, thank you. I prefer to actually visit my doctor where facebook doesn't get all the data about it.
I just finished reading "Masters of Doom" last night. The book is about id software, the company that made Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake and that pioneered 3D gaming. The book primarily follows John Carmack and John Romero, two of the founders of id. Carmack was responsible for developing almost all of the 3D engine code.
After finishing Quake, (what I believe to be) the first fully 3D PC game, Carmack wanted to work on a 3D virtual world inspired by the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The book at least makes it sound like Carmack believed that a 3D virtual world was the next big thing. Despite Carmack's wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first person shooters and other video games.
Carmack is now the CTO of Oculus VR. Keeping in mind Carmack's virtual reality ambitions and Zuckerberg's mission to "connect the world", this acquisition makes a lot more sense than it does thinking of Oculus VR as purely a gaming company.
As a game developer that's interested in doing some work with the Oculus, I could see this going one of two ways:
1) Facebook could stay hands off, giving the company the company the breathing room and capital to absolutely revolutionize gaming, and then on to other fields.
2) Oculus as a "communication platform" is attempted too soon and the core team is drawn away working on pet projects resulting in a drastic lack of focus, which would kill the product (momentum is key here).
Given that Facebook is the acquirer, I'd lean much further towards #1. If it were Google, I'd bet money on #2 (see the GAE thread today).
I don't think the privacy stuff is going to be a big deal, by the time this turns from being an interface device to an integrated product like Glass, the market will have matured and there'll be plenty of competitors offering the former.
So, it'll either good or bad. You read it here first, folks.
No, they could have made a sizable investment without having a controlling stake in it. No, they Acquired it. You don't do that unless you want to change something there. My best hope is that the Zuck sees something cool going on with the Oculus and wants to try his hand at something new. My worst fear is that they will develop the 'Oculus API' as a wrapper around the original API and Facebook. Now Facebook can ad ads featuring your friend's faces in games... and free 3d games if you just watch a 15 second ad for every five minutes that you play...
As soon as this whole shebang turns out to be good or bad I'm going to point to your comment, reitzensteinm, as having called the result first. People will extol your prescience from misty dale to cloud-tipped mountain top.
Three cheers for the ambivalent future of Facereality and Oculusbook!
Sorry to have to ask, but which was the GAE thread? I tried searching for it and havent found it. A link or the rough title regarding it would be helpful - thanks!
The reason why people haven't commented yet because we can't find the words. I have no immediate idea what can FB do with Oculus VR, even if I read Zuck's comments.
> 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.
This seems like the money quote. Basically they want to have everyone share virtual experiences together within your network.
This is the first indication, to me at least, that Facebook is going to be pursuing the "Bell Labs" style strategy that Google has been. For example, self-driving cars and robots are great new technologies and industries but have less than obvious connections to Googles core business. Facebook now would seem to be doing the same.
I'll hazard a guess, though Zuckerburg more or less lays it out. They'll create the Metaverse (as described in Snow Crash), but they'll own it. You will meet virtually with friends on the Facebook platform, and they will own it all the way through to the consumer hardware.
Facebook knows that Facebook.com is toping off. It wants to spread its reach. I really don't think there will be any crossover between Oculus and Facebook, just like there isen't any crossover between Windows and XBox.
Best early random guess is this is defensive against Google Glass. Basically the world is going to stay mobile but the form factor will move from phones to glasses. FB won't be caught lagging this time (like they did from Web to Mobile).
Have you no IMAGINATION!? Can't you picture a Farmville where you can actually see the teats on the cow right in front of you? See the corn waving in a virtual breeze? Best of all, see a beautifully rendered image of your money go up in flames each time you make an in-game purchase!
They have some of the best engineers and VPs in their space, huge hype, mindshare, and by all accounts a kick-ass product.
Forget why Facebook is interested, I don't get why Oculus would even consider selling for 10% of a WhatsApp. Their star was rising if anyone's ever was.
WhatsApp was already a star. It had millions of users and was the "go to" app for communication in many countries. We forget that here in NA. Oculus, as cool as it is, still doesn't have a huge customer/user database.
This is extremely disappointing. This technology had the potential to be much bigger than Facebook. The Occulus was poised to create an entirely new industry. They were pioneering a technology never before seen, with a legend like John Carmack pushing the state of the art.
I cannot think of a more colossal mistake to make as a founder. Palmer Luckey has shown he has absolutely no faith in his ability nor that of his team. Occulus had nothing but success in their future. They had investors beating down their doors with money, developers begging for their latest and greatest, and consumers itching to grab hold of their product.
Facebook is the antithesis to Occulus. They have never created any technology, they add zero value to the the real world, and have no future potential in the long run. Occulus selling to Facebook would have been like Tesla selling to Proctor and Gamble after they released the Roadster. A company with a technology so radical it can change the industry, succumbing to weakness and cashing out to an old money company that has no expertise in the field, in exchange for killing their product.
I am filled with sadness and disappointment. I believe Palmer Luckey will regret this decision.
Why on earth would Oculus sell at all, least of all to Facebook? What possible reason could Facebook have to purchase a company so far removed from its core competency?
People in the /r/oculus reddit are already expressing strong feelings of betrayal - eighty comments in under ten minutes, none positive.
"Facebook is the biggest name in social media." -> "Google, another tech powerhouse, is trying to push their social media offerings." -> "Google has 3 things that Facebook does not: Email, Youtube, and Glass." -> "Facebook is comfortable with the first two, since they have been there for years, but Glass is threatening to them." -> "Facebook needs their own 'Glass', in case Glass pans out."
My prediction: Glass will not pan out for Google, and Oculus Rift with languish with Facebook as a result. Facebook may put out some half-hearted "Use a Rift to view your friends 3d panoramas of their vacation" nonsense that nobody will care about, and the industry will be put off VR for another half-decade at least.
Google is also investing heavily into stuff thats far from their core competency, like robots and self driving cars. I just hope FB don't mess with it too much in the next few years.
> What possible reason could Facebook have to purchase a company so far removed from its core competency?
I would imagine Facebook feels under pressure to build up a core hardware engineering team. It's pretty clear that embedded and wearable computing is going to be a huge industry at some point in the future, and Facebook is going to need to get into that industry unless it wants to be indebted to and reliant upon hardware manufacturers.
So really, this acquisition makes sense for the same kind of reasons Google acquiring Nest makes sense - neither company has strong expertise or experience in consumer electronics hardware, and they need it going forward.
Maybe they see the rift as being a disruptor of the gaming industry, which is increasingly social (which has been very profitable for Facebook), and...oh I don't know. It's confusing.
I don't know how I feel about it, from a personal standpoint, and I don't understand it from a business perspective. Oculus don't really have an idea of how big/small the market is for the product yet, even.
Bah. I still want a DK2, and I still love what Oculus have done for VR.
I'm assuming that Facebook, given its size, has at least some leverage over the W3 standards committee. Imagine VR integration inside the browser (at least for positional tracking and latency mitigation).
I think Notch of Minecraft fame just cemented the folly of this in a Tweet a second ago:
> "We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."
The guy literally just visited Carmack (whom he admits is his idol) and the Oculus team less than a couple weeks ago, and kept mentioning how excited he was to start working on new VR games. I think this says a mouthful.
Yes this is exactly what's happening. They are turning into a holding company, this is just even more diversified than WhatsApp. FB's business model cannot justify the FB stock price, they are effectively using money people thought (wrongly) they were investing in social media and deploying it to better use because they know FB's revenue model is not going to live up to investors expectations long term. I can see the Bloomberg tomorrow stirring up excitement for FB's retail investors so they won't take a hard look at the numbers they actually invested in.
From Facebook investor relations, looks like the price was $2B, $400MM cash, $1.6 stock, with options on $300MM more.
> Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Oculus VR, Inc., the leader in immersive virtual reality technology, for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21, 2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain milestones.
This is probably the most forward-thinking move that Facebook can make. I've personally been kicking around ideas about what society will look like in a post-VR revolution world, and it seems that Zuck et. al. have come to the same conclusion that I have, namely, it will change what it means to interact socially with others.
Imagine a 10 year high school reunion that exists not in the old gymnasium, but in a virtual space where you can catch up with them.
Imagine sitting in the front row of the next presidential debate, where you can see the sweat forming on the candidate's brow under the lights. You can look over and talk to your friend sitting next to you without disturbing the action.
Imagine being able to tour a facebook friend's new apartment without leaving your chair.
This is super duper exciting, but I hope that Facebook doesn't kill it.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Now with the new "Live your friends life timeline feature, you can virtually live anyone elses life being projected right into your own set of VR goggles!"
Ok so that is the dystopian view :-(. I really don't get this move yet, much to process. I suppose 'hang out with your friends in a virtual bar'? concepts?
I don't want a "general-purpose VR headset". There are already many devices described that way (that work well enough for that purpose.) I wanted something built exclusively for the extreme requirements of gaming, and I feel this acquisition is going to distract the Oculus team from that. Facebook has no experience whatsoever in that domain, and the only way I see Oculus benefiting from this is the huge cash reserves they'll have access to once acquired. Truth be told, I was really hoping they'd get acquired by Valve - that'd strengthen their existing partnership (which I'm sure will cease to exist post acquisition), give them a good team to work with wrt. videogames and VR in general, and put them in an environment where their core focus is the same as that of their parent company. In this case, if the "experiment" fails, Facebook will almost certainly dump the project. Every time someone says "... we're going to make X a platform" before they actually have X, a kitten dies somewhere. There are still technical issues with the Oculus headset, and I'm afraid Facebook's "platform" focus is going to draw attention away from that. In short, I don't see this working. If fact, if Oculus fails, it might set the entire VR industry back several years. Luckily, we still have some hope in the form of Valve.
What a waste. I hate Facebook for doing this. And I'm not too happy with Oculus for accepting this either.
Facebook has no experience whatsoever in that domain, and the only way I see Oculus benefiting from this is the huge cash reserves they'll have access to once acquired.
There's a lot of infrastructure that a gaming company needs in 2014 that doesn't have that much to do with Oculus's core gaming focus and that Facebook has very direct experience with. Look at how long it took Sony to get remotely competitive with the Xbox's interface; look at powerhouses like EA and Nintendo embarrass themselves year after year. System UX, payments, network scaling, "social", building a customer friendly game marketplace. I don't think these are the areas Luckey, Carmack and company can't wait to work on in the morning, but they're perfectly suited to Facebook.
In a better case scenario, I can see Facebook (or Apple or Google, to be fair) helping Oculus build another Steam competitor years sooner than otherwise imaginable. Imagine if there were two brilliant companies competing to push the envelope on Linux gaming.
There doesn't seem to be that much difference between a good general-purpose VR headset and a good gaming-focussed one though. The refresh rate, positioning accuracy, latency and so on have to hit a certain high standard or you simply have a bad, non-immersive and likely sickness-inducing VR headset. (So the situation is very different from monitors: 60Hz and high latency is "good enough" for general-purpose monitor use but poor for competitive gaming.) If anything non-gaming applications may be more demanding when it comes to resolution: games can manage with 1080p but it's not really sufficient for reading text, viewing photos and so on.
I think this bothers me the most. Us gamers had our shiny new toy and then it got taken away so everybody can play with it now. I bet Facebook will figure out a way to subsidize this to get it in all of their user's hands and then gaming will take a big backseat to the Facebook Experience (TM).
Facebook is today what Microsoft was in the '90s. With a soaring stock price and a solid, if somewhat staid, core product that enjoys a near monopoly in crucial markets, the company looks for nebulous long-term innovation by buying interesting startups in various fields and promising them near-term independence.
Microsoft's shopping spree included companies like WebTV, Hotmail, Softimage and Bungie. Maybe Facebook will also splurge on a game studio soon.
Someone shared this with me with the words "RIP Oculus."
Can the megacorps please stop eating our young? Microsoft has a terrible history of buying up companies and then killing the project for some reason. Posterous got bought (I don't recall by whom) and killed. These big companies tend to not develop this stuff. They just eat it.
However, if FB screws this up, it leaves an even more wide open market for other new start-ups to dive in and make a big dent in virtual reality. The technology is ready, there's absolutely nothing that can stop what's coming, whether FB screws them up or not VR is here and it's primed.
I don't think it's fair to blame the megacorps and not the companies that are selling out. All these startups talk a good game about being cutting edge, disruptive, a passionate place to work etc. but it's all BS. Engineers work their asses off working on something they believe in and the minute some megacorp waves a big check in front of the founders they sell out. They might be passionate about their product but they are still more passionate about giant piles of money.
It's stuff like this that makes me not want to work for a startup. These guys had a great business. Everyone loved their product. Even the people who got physically sick from using it still thought it was cool and wanted them to succeed. They had a perfectly viable company that could have been very profitable on its own. But hey who wants all the responsibility and work of having your own profitable company when you can just sell out...
Let's not even get into how unethical it is to use something like KickStarter to get you started and then turn around and sell out for billions a couple years later before you even ship a consumer product.
[+] [-] lawl|12 years ago|reply
I had hoped they jump in bed with valve.
Yes, I just really dislike facebook, so I hate to see them aquiring something i was really excited about.
Also from the article:
> 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.
Nah, I'd rather not, thank you. I prefer to actually visit my doctor where facebook doesn't get all the data about it.
[+] [-] lightcatcher|12 years ago|reply
After finishing Quake, (what I believe to be) the first fully 3D PC game, Carmack wanted to work on a 3D virtual world inspired by the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The book at least makes it sound like Carmack believed that a 3D virtual world was the next big thing. Despite Carmack's wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first person shooters and other video games.
Carmack is now the CTO of Oculus VR. Keeping in mind Carmack's virtual reality ambitions and Zuckerberg's mission to "connect the world", this acquisition makes a lot more sense than it does thinking of Oculus VR as purely a gaming company.
[+] [-] reitzensteinm|12 years ago|reply
1) Facebook could stay hands off, giving the company the company the breathing room and capital to absolutely revolutionize gaming, and then on to other fields.
2) Oculus as a "communication platform" is attempted too soon and the core team is drawn away working on pet projects resulting in a drastic lack of focus, which would kill the product (momentum is key here).
Given that Facebook is the acquirer, I'd lean much further towards #1. If it were Google, I'd bet money on #2 (see the GAE thread today).
I don't think the privacy stuff is going to be a big deal, by the time this turns from being an interface device to an integrated product like Glass, the market will have matured and there'll be plenty of competitors offering the former.
So, it'll either good or bad. You read it here first, folks.
[+] [-] nobodysfool|12 years ago|reply
No, they could have made a sizable investment without having a controlling stake in it. No, they Acquired it. You don't do that unless you want to change something there. My best hope is that the Zuck sees something cool going on with the Oculus and wants to try his hand at something new. My worst fear is that they will develop the 'Oculus API' as a wrapper around the original API and Facebook. Now Facebook can ad ads featuring your friend's faces in games... and free 3d games if you just watch a 15 second ad for every five minutes that you play...
[+] [-] igravious|12 years ago|reply
Three cheers for the ambivalent future of Facereality and Oculusbook!
[+] [-] ionwake|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sz4kerto|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamkazemoose|12 years ago|reply
> 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.
This seems like the money quote. Basically they want to have everyone share virtual experiences together within your network.
[+] [-] julespitt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehsanu1|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fasteddie31003|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jusben1369|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeberbach|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apetresc|12 years ago|reply
Forget why Facebook is interested, I don't get why Oculus would even consider selling for 10% of a WhatsApp. Their star was rising if anyone's ever was.
[+] [-] giarc|12 years ago|reply
WhatsApp was already a star. It had millions of users and was the "go to" app for communication in many countries. We forget that here in NA. Oculus, as cool as it is, still doesn't have a huge customer/user database.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aryastark|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FD3SA|12 years ago|reply
I cannot think of a more colossal mistake to make as a founder. Palmer Luckey has shown he has absolutely no faith in his ability nor that of his team. Occulus had nothing but success in their future. They had investors beating down their doors with money, developers begging for their latest and greatest, and consumers itching to grab hold of their product.
Facebook is the antithesis to Occulus. They have never created any technology, they add zero value to the the real world, and have no future potential in the long run. Occulus selling to Facebook would have been like Tesla selling to Proctor and Gamble after they released the Roadster. A company with a technology so radical it can change the industry, succumbing to weakness and cashing out to an old money company that has no expertise in the field, in exchange for killing their product.
I am filled with sadness and disappointment. I believe Palmer Luckey will regret this decision.
[+] [-] neotek|12 years ago|reply
People in the /r/oculus reddit are already expressing strong feelings of betrayal - eighty comments in under ten minutes, none positive.
What a bizarre move.
[+] [-] Crito|12 years ago|reply
My prediction: Glass will not pan out for Google, and Oculus Rift with languish with Facebook as a result. Facebook may put out some half-hearted "Use a Rift to view your friends 3d panoramas of their vacation" nonsense that nobody will care about, and the industry will be put off VR for another half-decade at least.
[+] [-] pdq|12 years ago|reply
But completely logical from Oculus' perspective -- if someone offers you $2B to cash out before you've even launched, you'd be silly to say no.
[+] [-] kayoone|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baq|12 years ago|reply
yeah, what's next? zuck buying spacex so you can visit friends on the moon?
[+] [-] objclxt|12 years ago|reply
I would imagine Facebook feels under pressure to build up a core hardware engineering team. It's pretty clear that embedded and wearable computing is going to be a huge industry at some point in the future, and Facebook is going to need to get into that industry unless it wants to be indebted to and reliant upon hardware manufacturers.
So really, this acquisition makes sense for the same kind of reasons Google acquiring Nest makes sense - neither company has strong expertise or experience in consumer electronics hardware, and they need it going forward.
[+] [-] anjc|12 years ago|reply
I don't know how I feel about it, from a personal standpoint, and I don't understand it from a business perspective. Oculus don't really have an idea of how big/small the market is for the product yet, even.
Bah. I still want a DK2, and I still love what Oculus have done for VR.
[+] [-] Scene_Cast2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pabb|12 years ago|reply
> "We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."
The guy literally just visited Carmack (whom he admits is his idol) and the Oculus team less than a couple weeks ago, and kept mentioning how excited he was to start working on new VR games. I think this says a mouthful.
[+] [-] balls187|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] czr80|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neotek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sukuriant|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RKoutnik|12 years ago|reply
> Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Oculus VR, Inc., the leader in immersive virtual reality technology, for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21, 2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain milestones.
[+] [-] Kapura|12 years ago|reply
Imagine a 10 year high school reunion that exists not in the old gymnasium, but in a virtual space where you can catch up with them.
Imagine sitting in the front row of the next presidential debate, where you can see the sweat forming on the candidate's brow under the lights. You can look over and talk to your friend sitting next to you without disturbing the action.
Imagine being able to tour a facebook friend's new apartment without leaving your chair.
This is super duper exciting, but I hope that Facebook doesn't kill it.
[+] [-] SEJeff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
Ok so that is the dystopian view :-(. I really don't get this move yet, much to process. I suppose 'hang out with your friends in a virtual bar'? concepts?
[+] [-] ghc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|12 years ago|reply
Please login using your Facebook account to continue.
Email: ________
Password: ________
[+] [-] aviraldg|12 years ago|reply
What a waste. I hate Facebook for doing this. And I'm not too happy with Oculus for accepting this either.
[+] [-] saturdaysaint|12 years ago|reply
There's a lot of infrastructure that a gaming company needs in 2014 that doesn't have that much to do with Oculus's core gaming focus and that Facebook has very direct experience with. Look at how long it took Sony to get remotely competitive with the Xbox's interface; look at powerhouses like EA and Nintendo embarrass themselves year after year. System UX, payments, network scaling, "social", building a customer friendly game marketplace. I don't think these are the areas Luckey, Carmack and company can't wait to work on in the morning, but they're perfectly suited to Facebook.
In a better case scenario, I can see Facebook (or Apple or Google, to be fair) helping Oculus build another Steam competitor years sooner than otherwise imaginable. Imagine if there were two brilliant companies competing to push the envelope on Linux gaming.
[+] [-] leoc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yhippa|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lispython|12 years ago|reply
> For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week.I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.
> I can't follow the volume of tweets today, so if you want a real answer to something, try in a couple days after things die down.
> I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.
> I suppose I will get a FB account now, so that may lead to some writing a little longer than tweet length...
[+] [-] pavlov|12 years ago|reply
Microsoft's shopping spree included companies like WebTV, Hotmail, Softimage and Bungie. Maybe Facebook will also splurge on a game studio soon.
[+] [-] Mz|12 years ago|reply
Can the megacorps please stop eating our young? Microsoft has a terrible history of buying up companies and then killing the project for some reason. Posterous got bought (I don't recall by whom) and killed. These big companies tend to not develop this stuff. They just eat it.
[+] [-] adventured|12 years ago|reply
However, if FB screws this up, it leaves an even more wide open market for other new start-ups to dive in and make a big dent in virtual reality. The technology is ready, there's absolutely nothing that can stop what's coming, whether FB screws them up or not VR is here and it's primed.
[+] [-] Taylorious|12 years ago|reply
It's stuff like this that makes me not want to work for a startup. These guys had a great business. Everyone loved their product. Even the people who got physically sick from using it still thought it was cool and wanted them to succeed. They had a perfectly viable company that could have been very profitable on its own. But hey who wants all the responsibility and work of having your own profitable company when you can just sell out...
Let's not even get into how unethical it is to use something like KickStarter to get you started and then turn around and sell out for billions a couple years later before you even ship a consumer product.
[+] [-] josephpmay|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sindrome|12 years ago|reply