Support NeoGAF

[mattiewheels]

I know you guys think the Rift is dead and tainted and you'll never buy it forever and ever because the dream is dead etc etc... It what if this support is what they needed to make this thing what they really hoped to but didn't have the backing?

 

[Coreda]

I hope many developers have the same opinion.

@KazHiraiCEO is a parody account.

 

[Harlock]

Is like when John Lennon was killed.

 

[Nzyme32]

This is meaningless to VR's gaming future, Rift is hot because people care, but now they'll just care about whoever comes next, and it's probably going to be Valve.

The revolution isn't canceled, only rebranded.

The more time passes the more angry I get. There are only two options for stability...

 

[Winterismute]

Honestly, I kind of expected this (but not facebook).
Although they had a great piece of tech, and a very promising object, they were failing at finding a market for it. The demos that were circulating were not really impressive in terms of "pure entertainment" and the devkits spawned a lot of interest but not a lot of potential great games. I mean, the oculus does not make sense with all the games, or all the workstations. Their best shot was to develop their own piece of hardware, maybe even an ad-hoc store to ensure compatibility. Which means competition against all the major console (not only) companies.
Too big, too risky. They are a start-up, they went for the classical "merge/acquisition" exit strategy. Kind of lame but it's how it works.
But no, facebook no please.

 

[Lasthope106]

yeah, here's another thing to worry about, dev reactions.

if he's being serious then that's fucking huge.

Another day. Another overreaction from Markus.

 

[Copenap]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].



This is good news for VR.

Unfortunately there is not a single indication that Facebook would be interested in any of the pros you've mentioned.

 

[Zynx]

Wow.

I wonder if every competitor just became a lot more attractive - as a partner or as an investment.

And will Valve's attitude towards OR change?

 

[Ziltoid]

"You are playing Anime Sex Fest 2014! Nod your head to share this with all your friends!"

Suddenly I'm not looking forward to plying all those VR waifu simulators as I used to...

 

[Tain]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].



This is good news for VR.

Yeah, probably. This makes more sense to me than "this is bad because Facebook is bad".

 

[Byakuya769]

Kickstarter is a microcosm of income inequality and current capitalism. Broad public pays for some small trinket out of support and devotion to a corporate identity, the principals behind the idea/corporation then use that funding to give equity to the already rich.

 

[injurai]

yeah, here's another thing to worry about, dev reactions.

if he's being serious then that's fucking huge.

Honestly, Marcus is sort of naive when it comes to taking stances like this. He is really only hurting himself and fans.

 

[Zacxx201]

Whelp there goes any enthusiasm I had for the Oculus Rift. Here's hoping Sony or Valve or someone releases a superior alternative. Ugh.

 

[JayEH]

Oh man

 

[Robot Pants]

Why.jpg

 

[Valnen]

So does this mean VR for PC gaming is essentially dead?

 

[Salsa]

Another day. Another overreaction from Markus.

for sure, but you can bet every dev who was confident about Oculus is now having second thoughts.

 

[thetester77]

Yeah, right. It's not like the competition just got a lot bigger....Do you think they put two billion dollars on the table in order to shut Oculus down?

No but there is a good chance they will change the focus away from top tier gaming.

 

[boeso]

Unreal! Bombs, bombs everywhere.

 

[charsace]

How can a company that actually builds hardware and games be at a disadvantage to an ad company?

Facebook has connections with people that a lot of companies wished they had. Facebook has much less work to do to build a user base.

 

[BlastProcessing]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].



This is good news for VR.

I pretty much agree with your assesment. If VR gaming is going to really take off VR has to become something that transcends gaming. Facebook can do that. Right now Facebook is where people share and communicate online, VR can be a logical extension of that. This was a smart pick-up for Facebook $2 Billion is going to seem like a damn steal in a few years.

I wonder why Oculus sold though? It seems like they wanted to be the next Facebook/ Google/Microsoft themselves, not be acquired.

To the people freaking out, even if Facebook does ruin Oculus,someone will just Kickstart a new company to take it's place. The tech is here and VR is going to get it's chance no matter what.

 

[Shosai]

So two weeks ago Virtual Reality was a little project by some guys who had a succesful kickstarter.
Now two multinational multibillion dollar companies are all over it, too.

A little project with $60+ million in capital. It was a "little project" in 2012, maybe

 

[ironcreed]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL4Y0a4fXbk

 

[jayu26]

I put this in other thread, but this thread also needs it...

 

[Charcoal]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].



This is good news for VR.

You really think millions are going to buy the final product on day 1? Really?

If anything it will be a slow and rocky pace. The thirst for new tech is real but it's hard to justify on something so new like VR.

 

[darkside31337]

I don't cause it's all based on a kneejerk reaction. Not surprising since he won't put his games on Steam either.

Not putting the game on Steam isn't a kneejerk reaction.

And him choosing to not deal with Facebook probably isn't one either.

 

[-COOLIO-]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].



This is good news for VR.

good post.

 

[Tapiozona]

Unfortunately there is not a single indication that Facebook would be interested in any of the pros you've mentioned.

Nor is there a single indication that they aren't.

 

[ezekial45]

yeah, here's another thing to worry about, dev reactions.

if he's being serious then that's fucking huge.

Damn.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

yeah, here's another thing to worry about, dev reactions.

if he's being serious then that's fucking huge.

Holy cow.

 

[low-G]

Well...

Skepticism aside, this pretty much guarantees that VR will blow up in a big way in a relatively short time, right? Game developers on the fence previously are probably on board now.

Because everyone always loves every thing that Facebook does and it becomes a huge success because Facebook isn't struggling for relevance and everyone loves Facebook and thinks everything they do is great and worth spending hundreds of dollars on?

 

[jaaz]

Sorry guys, but Facebook is not synonymous with high-end PC gaming, no matter how much you want to try and believe this is a good thing for VR. It's not. It's up to Sony or MS now. Or Valve.

 

[mr2xxx]

And it starts, fuck.

 

[Tonidayo]

If there's one loser in this battle, it's kickstarter.com as users will become much more affraid of investing their money into projects due to what just happened with Facebook buying OR and losing all their cakes..

 

[Hazaro]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].

This is good news for VR.

This is a good post, but it doesn't get to downsampled 1440p@120Hz enthusiast as quickly (I think), and we aren't 100% sure of how exactly it's going to be handled (Listening now to conference call).

VR in consumer / business industry is going to be huge and it's obvious FB realizes the importance of being on the front of it.

 

[EmptySpace]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].



This is good news for VR.

this looks more like a wishlist.

 

[cascardian]

VR dating with 3d avatars wearing microtransacted vanity items INCOMING.

"Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever and change the way we work, play, and communicate."
- Palmer Luckey

Call me a cynical luddite, but that sounds extremely ominous to me... both in terms of advertising and general data collection possibilities or, I should say, intentions.

Seriously thought I stumbled upon the Onion when I read of it. I get that like this they'll have more capital to make things happen faster. But one would also have to be a fool to believe that absolutely nothing of the corporate Facebook brand will creep over to the OR project. WhatsApp has been fine so far, apart from still having one of the worst-implemented encryption systems that I've ever encountered (so much so that I can only believe it's intentional), but let's see how long it'll last.

Edit: Aaaand we're already losing people... Good on Markus.

People need to remember (and just freaking google it) just how shady Facebook has been. Criticism of it has its own humongous Wikipedia page, for Christ's sake.

 

[Sidewinder]

Of all the companies that could've bought OR it just had to be the worst aka Facebook, well done ;(

 

[inky]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:

Every positive you outline there comes with a negative attached that you are just simply willingly ignoring. "Infinite budget" comes with "infinite" strings attached that may actually sway the vision to serve Facebook's need first instead. They didn't pay that amount of money to just let them be.

More developers also means more people flocking to a new bubble, exploiting from all angles possible while dwarfing the original vision which might stifle the most promising, friendlier and innovative options because that is how big business works: they copy, they standardize, and aggressively push out smaller competitors.

Facebook attachment means a bigger userbase, yes. It also means Facebook's way of doing business (which is entirely around collecting personal data and selling ads) will be the driving force behind the syste,

This is good news for VR.

Sorry, but no. This is probably good short term news for getting it out the door. It is terrible news for anyone who has been following the tech side of Oculus VR and their primary focus.

Highlighting the text in red doesn't suddenly make it true

 

[Shin-Ra]

Secret Agent Phil strikes again.

Now Facebook has your head rocking and eye movement data!

 

[Garcia]

Shit - no minecraft for oculus

https://twitter.com/notch/status/448586381565390848


Can Morpheus have it? Minecraft was so good on the original devkit, VR is perfect for it

I feel just the way he does. Fucking hate Facebook.

 

[ghst]

NOW COMES THE KING!

what king?

all i see is a company which was soon to profit from bringing the development of an open standard to the mass market now facing an unholy and belligerent titan of an opponent with infinitely more reach than they could ever hope for.

oculus was perfectly content in co-existing with sony, being the industry leading vaguard for sony's army. now that vanguard has an army of its own and they worship the gods of chaos.

 

[.GqueB.]

They were maybe in talks or there was a deal? This tweet is non-sense.

 

[-SD-]

Shit - no minecraft for oculus

https://twitter.com/notch/status/448586381565390848

This is the first time I call Notch stupid. He'll certainly retract that comment, in the future.

 

[cheststrongwell]

Shit - no minecraft for oculus

https://twitter.com/notch/status/448586381565390848


Can Morpheus have it? Minecraft was so good on the original devkit, VR is perfect for it

Notch is such a tool.

 

[Mr. F]

Another day. Another overreaction from Markus.

He really kind of is the worst.

 

[Salsa]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].



This is good news for VR.

I wish I was naive enough to reach this level of ridiculous optimism

 

[Nibel]

I see this as extremely good news.

Positives of Facebook entering into VR race:
- Oculus now has infinite budget to craft perfect hardware, software and entire VR platform for PC and portables
- Countless more developers will become interested in VR, short byte-size games will find much larger audience on VR
- VR promotion on Facebook.com = MILLIONS of VR adopters on day 1
- More VR users of all kinds = more AAA games for us PC gamers
- Immediate infusion of entertainment/documentary/travel content
- Holy grail of VR - social networking inside minecraft-esque VR space. Just what Snow Crash depicted in its Metaverse.
- with stylized design, VR metaverse could be run even from iOS/Android phones
- Facebook can sell hardware with loss, providing incredibly HQ hardware for ~$99
- Presence of strong player in VR will force Sony to become very invested in VR, making much more compelling product and enabling 3rd parties much more streamlined patch toward porting games to PS4


Negatives?
So far, none, as long PC gamers get what they were promised [and FB is willing not to interfere with that].



This is good news for VR.

The problem is that you think like a gamer would think - I am not sure how much Facebook cares about any of the points you've mentioned

 

[jem0208]

Ahahah, the best bit was the ~99$.

It's beautiful that you are so optimistic simply because Facebook has a lot of money.

I'm not thinking every single one of these is going to come true.


I'm more thinking that I can't see any major negatives which would come from this. Yet there are some obviously huge benefits such as a much increased budget for Oculus.



Edit: The only negative I've seen so far is Notch being a naive idiot.

 

[Sentenza]

Going from personal experience, a promising startup getting snapped up by an aggressive corporation early in its lifetime is usually very beneficial financially for the founders and a pretty big detriment to the original vision of the product or service.

Facebook is an advertising company, specifically they're in the business of selling targeted user data to their advertising partners. How that business model distorts the vision for Oculus VR gaming that had so many excited is the reason for the knee jerk negativity.

But seriously, do you expect unlimited funding to somehow result in less game development?

I expect it to result in a substantial change in focus, priorities, methodology and so on.
As someone else put it for me:

Going from personal experience, a promising startup getting snapped up by an aggressive corporation early in its lifetime is usually very beneficial financially for the founders and a pretty big detriment to the original vision of the product or service.

Facebook is an advertising company, specifically they're in the business of selling targeted user data to their advertising partners. How that business model distorts the vision for Oculus VR gaming that had so many excited is the reason for the knee jerk negativity.

How can you not realize this, I don't know.