Oculus Rift

Agricola

Paraphrasing but Luckey mentioned in a reply there that the core Oculus team will continue to work on the gaming side of it, and the additional Facebook resources will mean more teams working on the social media side of it. This is our only hope! The bottomless pit of money they now have access to could allow expansion so maybe it wont be a question of them being steered off course, at least right away.

He sounds very sure of himself, as there is a whole lot of information not made public which means they continue to hold the reigns no matter what. He is 21 though and possibly very excited about buying 3 new Ferraris!

johnny_ultimate

It's early days for these massive Facebook acquisitions yet, but it's vaguely encouraging they've so far shown little incentive to undermine or fundamentally alter the popular services they have acquired (whatsapp and Instagram, although obviously they're a different sort of ballpark). There's no doubt incredibly smart people working for them, as mentioned above, so this surely isn't a move of purely destructive cynicism. There's countless companies out there who have remained as functional as ever under new owners, some have even emerged stronger and more capable. I think wait and see how this plays out before we can draw any definitive conclusions.

It is a further indicator how woefully inadequate Kickstarter is for financing major projects. Look at even record breaking examples. Broken Age ran out of funds despite earning unheard of millions. Veronica Mars was deemed a huge success and yet only managed to secure finances comparable to a low budget independent film, and that's without reflecting the costs of fulfilling rewards. Now Oculus. More and more the 'kickstart' in the name is seeming like a totally apt descriptor - Kickstarter can give a product an early boost, but after that it's a wild west.

magick

Why does everything have to be social. Just let me play a game without begging me to post it all over the internet.

ScumLord

Shiminay wrote: »

Whoah there, hold on. Facebook is a legit hard and software tech company and have some brilliant people working for them - just not in this niche area. Google, Sun, Amazon and MS are maybe the only people who know more about server farms and the likes than they do. They have a BILLION users, one doesn't simply ring Dell and ask for a few racks full of servers to support a monster like that

I've never seen a facebook product other than the facebook website. I didn't know they had any experience in consumer tech. Making your own in house server farm wouldn't really be the same thing as trying to sell to the general public, if a member of staff makes a mistake with your in house equipment it can be dealt with easily and rapidly, if something goes wrong with stuff you're selling to the public it's a nightmare that takes on a life of it's own. The consumer market and dealing with ordinary people is a completely different kettle of fish.

on the amount of money from kickstarter - that's $2.4 million, with no ownership stake.
$88.6 million was raised through other funding - venture capital mainly. Puts things in perspective.
So they are the shareholders... $2bn offer comes in and they get a huge return - not going to be refused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift

Retr0gamer

gizmo wrote: »

Pretty sure the only patent OR have is a design patent to avoid potential rip offs. I could be wrong though as I only gave it a quick look when I saw the announcement last night.

Some quotes from Luckey and Carmack here anyway.

Yep, but there's potential for patents as well. I bet facebook want to expand the R&D beyond Virtual Reality.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Pretty sure the only patent OR have is a design patent to avoid potential rip offs. I could be wrong though as I only gave it a quick look when I saw the announcement last night.

Some quotes from Luckey and Carmack here anyway.

If they start doing new hardware designs for the internals they might gather a nice number of patents (though they'll also get embroiled in quite a few patent wars too I imagine).

TeddyTedson

I imagine Mark is going to use the company to delevop a product rivaling Google glass. This is only good news for the rift as it will get to market a lot quicker and have all the financial support it needs.

FlyingIrishMan

TeddyTedson wrote: »

I imagine Mark is going to use the company to delevop a product rivaling Google glass. This is only good news for the rift as it will get to market a lot quicker and have all the financial support it needs.

Oculus isn't anything like Google Glass. Glass is AR, Oculus is VR and definitely can't be used in everyday life like Glass.

Getting to the market quicker isn't worth it if it directly affects the long term role of VR.

DesperateDan

Farmville VR Edition

TeddyTedson

FlyingIrishMan wrote: »

Oculus isn't anything like Google Glass. Glass is AR, Oculus is VR and definitely can't be used in everyday life like Glass.

Getting to the market quicker isn't worth it if it directly affects the long term role of VR.

Oculus is remaining independent within Facebook.
This is only good news for Rift fans.

bennyineire

Fast forward 5-10 years, I'm in New York, my brother is in Austrailia and my Mother is at home, it's Christmas day and we all sit down together to have Christmas dinner together through oculus rift.
So how many people on Facebook do you think would like this service and would be willing to pay for it ? my guess is that if Facebook develop this right 2 Billion is gonna be a steal.
It also could mean meeting your mates in an oculus vr bar even though your thousands of miles away, sounds exiting to me

TeddyTedson

bennyineire wrote: »

Fast forward 5-10 years, I'm in New York, my brother is in Austrailia and my Mother is at home, it's Christmas day and we all sit down together to have Christmas dinner together through oculus rift.
So how many people on Facebook do you think would like this service and would be willing to pay for it ? my guess is that if Facebook develop this right 2 Billion is gonna be a steal.
It also could mean meeting your mates in an oculus vr bar even though your thousands of miles away, sounds exiting to me

Unless we're warping by that stage.

grizzly

bennyineire wrote: »

meeting your mates in an oculus vr bar even though your thousands of miles away, sounds exiting to me

Sounds to me like a dude drunkenly falling over furniture.

Retr0gamer

bennyineire wrote: »

It also could mean meeting your mates in an oculus vr bar even though your thousands of miles away, sounds exiting to me

Sure I just have a few cans and watch episodes of cheers and pretend they are all my friends.

Then I cry myself to sleep.

Lemming

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Oculus is remaining independent within Facebook.

Facebook is allowing OC to run itself autonomously for now. Facebook own OC at the end of the day now and whatever they say goes. That is the reality, no matter how much gloss & spin gets put out.

nesf

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Oculus is remaining independent within Facebook.
This is only good news for Rift fans.

This is as naive as blind criticism. Facebook may not screw this up or they may, we don't know because they lack a good track record with this kind of thing. We haven't seen them buy a new technology firm before and people can't know what to expect. Expecting people to treat this as good news is a bit odd.

RasTa

TeddyTedson

nesf wrote: »

This is as naive as blind criticism. Facebook may not screw this up or they may, we don't know because they lack a good track record with this kind of thing. We haven't seen them buy a new technology firm before and people can't know what to expect. Expecting people to treat this as good news is a bit odd.

But the money they now have backing them is incredible. Your point surely applies for bad news on that basis doesn't it. Instagram and what's app are positives surely.

rey8px2m7altcs

Heard the news about FB last night. I am sad to say the least. We all know that facebook has a history of trying to "improve" a design and fking it up entirely. Sure even Notch is against it. I dare say the only reason CCP are still going ahead with it is due to time constraints. They built the game purely as a beta for Oculus and then developed into a real game. With all that work they can't exactly up and leave. CCP have already cut back on their staff earlier this year.
At least other developers are working on it. Occulus Rift was the starting point but we all know how the first business to produce something will have higher prices that other brands (well maybe not Sony lol).

Tipsy McSwagger

TeddyTedson wrote: »

But the money they now have backing them is incredible. Your point surely applies for bad news on that basis doesn't it. Instagram and what's app are positives surely.

They're social apps. I was interested in the OR purely from a gaming perspective not a social one.

Varik

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Oculus is remaining independent within Facebook.
This is only good news for Rift fans.

Until facebook say otherwise, Oculus have no say in what happens now.

nesf

TeddyTedson wrote: »

But the money they now have backing them is incredible. Your point surely applies for bad news on that basis doesn't it. Instagram and what's app are positives surely.

Neither Instagram nor Whatsapp are positives in that they're nothing similar, they both made sense as acquisitions given Facebook's business whereas Oculus Rift is quite a bit different, it's not an advertising funded social web based service.

Money is great but what tags are attached to it? Maybe none, maybe loads, we can't know until the product hits the shelves. For people who thought they were buying into an independent tech company it's something of a bitter pill, similar to if Notch had sold early beta Minecraft to EA or Activision.

nyarlothothep

So correct me if I'm wrong, but Zuckerberg wants to market it to a mainstream fb audiencea and implement loads of ads? I can't see this selling, such an audience will see the idea of wearing a headset as "uncool" and unless I'm completely clueless about human nature, people are not going to put on a headset only to be bombared with annoying ads. If Sony release their version aimed at gamers everyone will just buy that.

Varik

nyarlothothep wrote: »

So correct me if I'm wrong, but Zuckerberg wants to market it to a mainstream fb audiencea and implement loads of ads? I can't see this selling, such an audience will see the idea of wearing a headset as "uncool" and unless I'm completely clueless about human nature, people are not going to put on a headset only to be bombared with annoying ads. If Sony release their version aimed at gamers everyone will just buy that.

Price will be a big factor for the mainstream market and I can't see them pushing performance or specs when they're trying to keep the price down.

rey8px2m7altcs

TeddyTedson wrote: »

But the money they now have backing them is incredible. Your point surely applies for bad news on that basis doesn't it. Instagram and what's app are positives surely.

I see but one parrallel and I hate to bring up it's dirty name... EA. EA funds DICE and look what they did...

Robert ninja

This has been me since I read the news last night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01vfavRV_aE

johnny_ultimate

If you haven't pledged for Frog Fractions 2 on Kickstarter yet, they've added another stretch goal to entice you:

Merger

I don't know read alot of reviews, Had a giggle at this one "Facebook to buy Oculus Rift, Farmville players rejoice"

I don't see why facebook acquired them, Simply seems like a purchase...Just because they can.

TeddyTedson

Well it's been stated that this iteration will remain as a gaming device. I think people will look back or rather quietly forget this initial knee jerk reaction.
Mark isn't going to post reassuring people and then go back on his word and piss off the fan base interested in the product.
Stay calm.