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[Kinky John]

 

[Pie and Beans]

Haha, just yelled WHAT THE FUCK when I read this. Girlfriend left the room saying "oh dear... thats you for this evening then".

Poor fit. Definitely understand why Oculus peeps weren't playing ball and sounding jovial and open to Sony's Morpheus now. Their rockstar free-spirit cred was quickly going to evaporate and they'll be another cog in a giant corp machine themselves.

Hopefully this doesn't change hardware, but am worried about how this will be used to "leverage profitability" like Facebook clearly was. Also if Facebook ever tumbles, now this is tied to it.

I'd sell my balls for 2 billion (1 bill each, get em while theyre hot) so I cant blame the dudes, but still, sad.

 

[mfaex]

Laughing out loud.

 

[Mashing]

Posting this again as the thread moves too fast.

I have to LOL at the reactions here. Like there is ANYONE who would not sell out for 2 BILLION US DOLLARS. You're staring at a potentially risky product that may never make that much and on the other hand you're retiring to some tropical island with a shit load of money and FB stock options.

 

[maxiell]

Durante burying this development in a deep, deep hole. He's basically the canary in the coal mine/video gaming messageboard.

 

[Salsa]

Wasn't that already the word on the street? I'm sure I heard that they were working on such tech including VR and biofeedback.

they straight up came out saying they're gonna fully support the Oculust Rift instead of making their own headset; even though they've been working on a prototype

my guess is that they now push that prototype into reality and eat up all the fans that are now left VR hungry

 

[TAJ]

This is actually good news. 4K/120Hz CV1 incoming.

Grandma doesn't have the PC to drive that.

 

[Toadette]

i hate facebook there buying everything we like

 

[Dennis]

Good news: this means that VR will be the future.

Bad news: the future is going to suck ass.

 

[solarus]

If facebook turns this to shit then I pray valve has not become lax with their VR project and they are still actively working on it. We need a strong alternative.

 

[Dragon]

Because they, like everyone else with a few brain cells to rub together, realize VR is the future, and have the money to throw around.

With this type of logic they must think WhatsApp is even more the future than OR.

 

[SighFight]

I am not happy with this. Not happy at all. I expect cheap but advertisement optimized cv1 now. All those years avoiding Facebook and now this...

 

[ChosenPredator]

 

[Usobuko]

maybe John Carmack can buy Id Software back from Zenimax now.

I laughed at this. 10/10, well played.

 

[gofreak]

If there's one 'good' thing to come from this, is that I think it will encourage competition in the space on PC.

I can see one or two other big vendors emerging.

The market, and early adopter market, might have been happy to have OR as a defacto standard before, but I don't think it will be so warm to that idea now.

Maybe Valve will re-examine their decision not to bring a product to market.

The idea of a dev abstraction ala Valve's API, that multiple kits can plug into, definitely got more important too.

 

[gutterboy44]

You got your backer rewards (so did I). You weren't promised anything more.

Psst, it is sarcasm. It just goes to show how insane things can be. We went from a $250,000 Kickstarter campaign to a $2,000,000,000 buyout in 19 months.

 

[Uff duh]

This thread. Crazy. But I don't think its all doom and gloom. As long as the team stays working on the tech. It doesn't change the fact that they are super talented people that care about VR.

 

[U n i o n 0015]

Man, I wouldn't even have let Facebook buy me. Oculus had so much more potential than to sell to Facebook.

 

[VillageBC]

And suddenly, Sony's product is immensely more appealing.

This purchase makes no sense to me.

 

[Vico]

Wat.

 

[Keyser Soze]

On the bright side, Carmack can now build a rocket to fucking Mars

 

[mobius006]

facebook has been looking to expand. Makes sense. Good investment. Excited to see if (almost) unlimited capital behind it can push out a great product, with an ecosystem to match.

 

[Sentenza]

Would you turn down $2 billion?

Honestly? Yes, because I felt the company had a grasp on something with the potential to become far more valuable than that sum.
Especially when we are talking about 2 billions made mostly of "Facebook shares" (which I would find hilarious if it wasn't so sad).

 

[MormaPope]

Would you turn down $2 billion?

If there one thing that someone cannot be angry about, it's the amount of money on the table. Turning down 2 billion dollars is something only a fool would do, someone with a creative/artistic/developmental mind can now achieve almost anything they wanted to.

 

[injurai]

 

[WhiskeyKnight]

I want to die.

 

[charsace]

Carmack winning on the money front.

 

[Gorillaz]

.
lmao

 

[Kade]

This isn't going to be as bad as some of you think it'll be.

 

[IncandescentPrecept]

It's disappointing because the Morpheus won't officially support the PC.

At least the focus will be games.

 

[DieH@rd]

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

"We’ll see you in the Metaverse!"

At least they got the right reference. Snow Crash >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Ready Player One.

 

[KnockOneOff]

Sitting watching a basket ball game seat side, sitting in a virtual classroom learning

This is going to be aweful

Social media killed the real world

 

[DarkLordMalik]

 

[Vinc]

Because Morpheus doesn't exist and Oculus Rift was going to become the new Wii, depsite not many modern PCs being able to properly use it, right?

I guess I should have added "one of"*

But I do strongly believe this tech has amazing potential. Morpheus is just as exciting.

 

[Goomba64]

Bloomberg TV is currently discussing the deal

 

[Jonboy]

Hahaha. Perfect.

 

[Josman]

So... Good or bad thing? It's a good thing to have a gigantic corporation backing the Virtual reality future

Better than MS I guess

 

[Gentleman Jack]

"Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook"

You need to be paranoid or use some serious motivated reasoning to assume anything else...

FB didn't spring up overnight, it carries all the baggage and smoldering ruins of what used to be consumer goodwill with every purchase it makes. I can't blame people for being paranoid.

 

[Donthizz#]

what's next, Google buying Valve?

 

[crimsonheadGCN]

This is probably Facebook trying to expand beyond social media. I don't think it'll change the goals of OR.

I just wonder what will happen with the Valve partnership, Valve's VR research, and if Valve was looking at acquiring OR?

 

[inky]

Ugh.

No.

 

[Fushichou187]

Prepare for ads ads ads to be pushed into your eyeballs.

It'll be interesting to hear what the reaction from the PC dev community is and whether or not this pushes more projects to Sony and Morpheus earlier than expected. Also, Polygon had a good article recently about Sony being comfortable with OR taking the lead on things while they took more of a curatorial position in regards to the experiences they would bring over to Playstation. Things could still play out that way but I think FB's purchase will put off a lot of people and put more of a spotlight on Morpheus for better or worse.

So, as a Kickstarter backer, how much of this 2 billion do I get back?

That's actually a really interesting angle to the story. A kickstarted venture flipped for $2 billion in less than 2 years (KS funded on 8/31/12). I'm sure KS will leverage this story to attract more investment and participation to its platform, but I'll be more interested to see if some startups go in for crowdfunding for their initial seed capital instead of traditional Angel Investors.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

? What? Hardly.

They've already spent $2billion on a company that has yet to ship a full retail product. How much more do you think they intend to spend on this company as time goes on? They clearly didn't buy this with the intention of VR remaining the relatively niche product it was still expected to become over the next 4-5 years. This was done to kick the project into overdrive. On the flipside, I'm hoping that means an even more affordable/timely CV1, but who knows as there's pretty much no one in the industry who could have foreseen something like this at this stage. Interesting times, indeed.

 

[Ricker]

Palmer Luckey via the r/oculus subreddit

I’ve always loved games. They’re windows into worlds that let us travel somewhere fantastic. My foray into virtual reality was driven by a desire to enhance my gaming experience; to make my rig more than just a window to these worlds, to actually let me step inside them. As time went on, I realized that VR technology wasn’t just possible, it was almost ready to move into the mainstream. All it needed was the right push.
We started Oculus VR with the vision of making virtual reality affordable and accessible, to allow everyone to experience the impossible. With the help of an incredible community, we’ve received orders for over 75,000 development kits from game developers, content creators, and artists around the world. When Facebook first approached us about partnering, I was skeptical. As I learned more about the company and its vision and spoke with Mark, the partnership not only made sense, but became the clear and obvious path to delivering virtual reality to everyone. Facebook was founded with the vision of making the world a more connected place. Virtual reality is a medium that allows us to share experiences with others in ways that were never before possible.
Facebook is run in an open way that’s aligned with Oculus’ culture. Over the last decade, Mark and Facebook have been champions of open software and hardware, pushing the envelope of innovation for the entire tech industry. As Facebook has grown, they’ve continued to invest in efforts like with the Open Compute Project, their initiative that aims to drive innovation and reduce the cost of computing infrastructure across the industry. This is a team that’s used to making bold bets on the future.
In the end, I kept coming back to a question we always ask ourselves every day at Oculus: what’s best for the future of virtual reality? Partnering with Mark and the Facebook team is a unique and powerful opportunity. The partnership accelerates our vision, allows us to execute on some of our most creative ideas and take risks that were otherwise impossible. Most importantly, it means a better Oculus Rift with fewer compromises even faster than we anticipated.
Very little changes day-to-day at Oculus, although we’ll have substantially more resources to build the right team. If you want to come work on these hard problems in computer vision, graphics, input, and audio, please apply!
This is a special moment for the gaming industry — Oculus’ somewhat unpredictable future just became crystal clear: virtual reality is coming, and it’s going to change the way we play games forever.
I’m obsessed with VR. I spend every day pushing further, and every night dreaming of where we are going. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined we’d come so far so fast.
I’m proud to be a member of this community — thank you all for carrying virtual reality and gaming forward and trusting in us to deliver. We won’t let you down.

Well that's a little reasurring at least...thanks.

 

[Singularity42]

Should have been google!

Well the dream is dead

 

[Empty]

eww. it'll probably be fine for a few years but eventually it'll have to fit in line with facebook's corporate agenda of selling advertising. just hope vr is bigger than oculus such that it doesn't matter too much

 

[theDeeDubs]

This thing might actually have a chance to go beyond niche status now. Never would've guess that.

 

[Timeaisis]

Well, this is unexpected.

 

[Nokterian]

Welp well sorry this is some bullshit right here...now in OR you will see ads and your feed during gameplay!

 

[jett]

I have to wonder how many DK2's would've been sold if they had announced this before making them available to the general public.