Facebook buys Oculus Rift, $2 billion

[Ink]

OculusVR.com: Oculus Joins Facebook

We started Oculus with a vision of delivering incredible, affordable, and ubiquitous consumer virtual reality to the world. We’ve come a long way in the last 18 months: from foam core prototypes built in a garage to an incredible community of active and talented developers with more than 75,000 development kits ordered. In the process, we’ve defined what consumer virtual reality needs to be and what it’s going to require to deliver it.

A few months ago, Mark, Chris, and Cory from the Facebook team came down to visit our office, see the latest demos, and discuss how we could work together to bring our vision to millions of people. As we talked more, we discovered the two teams shared an even deeper vision of creating a new platform for interaction that allows billions of people to connect in a way never before possible.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve joined forces with Facebook to create the best virtual reality platform in the world.​

Read more - http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-facebook/

What are your thoughts?

 

[Venustus]

As a gamer,this is what I think!

 

[Striker]

As agamer,this is what I think!

Same lol. U heard the Voice in our head too when u read the text from the picture? But facebooks stragegy is just nice for the future.

 

[Venustus]

Early Supporters of Oculus VR Denounce Facebook Buyout:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/...facebook-purchase/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Sometimes, the best way to alienate a little company’s early backers is a big payday.

Tuesday afternoon, Facebook unexpectedly announced that itplanned to purchase Oculus VR, the maker of a virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift, for $2 billion.

Reaction to the deal ranged from excitement (including on Wall Street) to bewilderment — and no, as some were wondering, it was not an early April Fools Day prank.

 

[Prorootect]

Game Developers on Oculus Acquisition: From Feeling Validated to 'The Wrong Direction' : on mashable.com : http://mashable.com/2014/03/28/developers-oculus-facebook/
..
"I'm mostly wary of the influence such a huge company like Facebook can have in day-to-day decisions Oculus can make. But at the same time I can't help but be very curious on what a huge budget can bring to the table in making VR an actual accessible mass product that drives innovation forwards in environments other than gaming," said developer Fernando Ramallo, who created a musical virtual reality environment for Oculus called Komorebi.
"I'm also very scared of it becoming the next bubble for horrible moneymakers and virtual reality being associated by the general public with blood-sucking money scams. But I guess it'll be up to the creators to prove people that's not the case."
..
Oculus_Rift_Gallery-3 - It's a little crazy, virtual reality.jpg

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The Future of Virtual Reality : on oculusvr.com : http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/the-future-of-virtual-reality/
I think, much more interesting are the comments that the article itself ..
So here are a few (from 188 comments for now):
By Andrew Hosking : March 25 at 7:51pm
'Congratulations on giving yourself leprosy for the metaphorical 30 pieces of silver dangled in front of you. By selling out to one of the least respected and anti-consumer, anti-privacy internet based corporations that exist today.
A company who's policies on nickle and dime/micro transactions are for many despised, a company who shown time and time again has no respect for users privacy and an owner who himself stated he believes that in his ideal future no-one should have any privacy in order to create his vision of a connected world, even going so far as to offering users data to his friends for laughs and out of contempt for user privacy. A company that is extremely aggressive on advertising that borders on abuse of it and certainly providing a truly shocking amount of unwanted spam regarding such. A company who's owner has also expressed using Oculus to serve that purpose regarding the pushing of advertising onto it's users like it did on the users of it's online web service.

You just took the dreams of a generation and crushed them. Many felt that your dream was the same as theirs, now it lays in ruins under the foot of a large corporation despised by many. The plethora of platitudes and insincere promises by Facebook goes against their evident track record and their own creators expressed opinion on pushing your product into advert revenue generation plus proven contempt for the rights of it's users. Enjoy your metaphorical 30 pieces of silver, I hope you think it was worth it but I like many others cannot join you and rejoice on the ashes of our dreams for the future of VR after this news.

The backlash should of been expected and maybe it was which is why the news came out of nowhere to the public, I wish you the best of luck but I hold out at most a microscopic level of hope that your product won't become a typical facebook privacy violating, advert infested, anti-consumer policy orientated device like facebook's web based service.' - 54 likes for now ..

By Brian Wayne Laube : March 25 at 3:53pm
I will be taking my business elsewhere, and so should everyone else. Oh the oculus has a camera now? Facebook tracks your every move online? Great idea to have a Facebook camera hooked up to your PC.

 

[Mateotis]

I hold out at most a microscopic level of hope that your product won't become a typical facebook privacy violating, advert infested, anti-consumer policy orientated device like facebook's web based service.' - 54 likes for now ..

I'm having the same kind of hope, in the same size. But the future doesn't look so bright now for us, VR lovers.