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[gofreak]

so come 2015 I get to choose between a giant megacorporation knee deep in nefarious exploitative practices to bring me a full fat VR experience and a second giant megacorporation knee deep in debt whose VR solution will anchor me to their underpowered proprietary crap box.

Look on the bright side - endeavours to hack Sony's kit to work on PC will probably be pursued that much more vigorously now.

Plus I think this leaves open a space for new players on the PC side, since I think it will have some impact on OR's goodwill as a potential defacto standard. I hope Valve is re-examining their plans for example.

 

[Durante]

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.

Well said.

Honestly, I am 100% sure this is a success for the short term, and an absolute tragedy in the long term. By that point, I expect to jump to a competitor. I don't think I've ever been so conflicted about the future

Yeah, that's my plan. I still want DK2, simply because it will be the best option this July.

As soon as a technically decent competitor is on the map, I'll be off though. Start your copy machines, Samsung or Huawei or whoever!

Man. If this was "Apple buys Oculus" it would be such great news.

Thank you for making me realize that this is not, in fact, the worst case scenario.

You people should seriously stop with this bullshit reasoning of "if it has a bigger company behind, it's probably going to be a better product as well".
It was a stupid and baseless claim when people said it for Sony's Morpheus, it's even more stupid now that Facebook is in control of Oculus VR.

Yes.

so come 2015 I get to choose between a giant megacorporation knee deep in nefarious exploitative practices to bring me a full fat VR experience and a second giant megacorporation knee deep in debt whose VR solution will anchor me to their underpowered proprietary crap box.

Yes

 

[Basketball]

 

[Sentenza]

so come 2015 I get to choose between a giant megacorporation knee deep in nefarious exploitative practices to bring me a full fat VR experience and a second giant megacorporation knee deep in debt whose VR solution will anchor me to their underpowered proprietary crap box.

Yeah, apparently.
There's no winning outcome here.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Lawsuits likely wouldn't work.

Some people literally gave their money to people for an idea. You weren't funding a startup to get a return on investment. You gave your money to someone to pay for an idea.

And they used that money to become billionaires.

*thumbs up*

Getting what you paid for.

 

[mattiewheels]

Kickstarter. Angel investing for those who don't want their return

How did they not get their return? They got the devkit they pledged for.

 

[BraXzy]

LOL at the over reaction of people on this board. So ridiculous.

Oculus will now be able to release the Rift faster, with better quality and potentially at a better price to reach mass consumption. This wil have no impact on the gaming side as the drivers will still be released to handle games and whatever else Facebook has in store.

If anything this puts Sony in a bad position as the rift will be a mainstream product that everyone will be aware of and potentially buy compared to Sony's niche gaming market.

Somebody has a clear head at least.

 

[MThanded]

...Oh god. At least it's not Apple.

I would have preferred Apple buy them. They are great at bringing products to the mass market.

 

[Tempy]

VR is way more than just gaming, so not surprised a non-gaming company bought OR.
This can go both ways imo. On one hand OR can get the necessary funding to do whatever. On the other hand, that whatever is controlled by FB.

If anything, the VR competition just stepped a notch.

 

[Clott]

Let's see where this goes, they now have the biggest R&D budget they could ask for, will Facebook have them create some social VR, of course.

But with their budget they should have money to hire help in order to tackle all their projects.

PS. To the people that backed their kick starter with lots of money, I hope you're rightfully compensated, if you not, you better lawyer the fuck up.

 

[Turin Turambar]

So the KS backers are screwed? I mean when they backed up the project, they were supposed to have something in return right? Like a free headset if you invested 300$ or more? Is it contractual?

They already got it. 70000 people got the dev kit.

 

[ScOULaris]

I'm speechless. I have an awful feeling about this.

 

[Hollycat]

And from the left field....

 

[Kurdel]

"Acquisition positions Facebook to accelerate Oculus' growth in gaming, communications and new social experiences."

Fuuuuuuck. Why, Facebook. WHY.

I am sorry, but what's wrong with that?

 

[fargofallout]

Also, thinking of Facebook selling a device to consumers is weird. Is there going to be an option to put ads in there and make it cheaper?

 

[Mister Chippy]

Casual games is still a big market. Look at Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, Candy Crush. Amazon and Facebook are looking at those. They are not looking at Luftrausers, or Oddworld, or the next Platinum's game.

But why on earth would they need or want VR for that?

 

[Josh7289]

So they can crash and burn together.

 

[NemesisPrime]

Looks like it. They probably wanted more funding to help deliver Oculus at a comparable level.

You joking I hope? Or did I miss the sarcasm?

 

[mercenar1e]

they haven't even launched a consumer version and Facebook paid $2 billion for it lol how much of it is money/stock?

 

[Frolow]

Sony save us.

 

[Gaogaogao]

...Oh god. At least it's not Apple.

you know what, no. apple would make more sense than this. they actually make hardware.

 

[ismk]

Seriously? Facebook? I don't want to live anymore. Sarcasm aside, I wonder why they sold out to Facebook. Is Facebook getting into console war?

 

[Azure J]

Easily the wildest piece of news I've seen in YEARS.

 

[VillageBC]

Or just play games on a regular display like everyone else.

Luddite.

 

[Waylon Drums]

This is the strangest thing. In ever.

 

[kutthoat5150]

One eye now dedicated to VR, the other eye dedicated to facebook ads, cant fucking wait!

 

[ironcreed]

READ THIS YOU BASTARDS

from our dear leader palmer luckey


http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of_vr/

All I got from that was, 'I just got paid 2 billion dollars, biatch!'

 

[Mr.Green]

Well obviously nobody saw that one coming but I'm not turning drama queen mode on yet.

 

[DieH@rd]

VR dead again confirmed. :/

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 path 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.

 

[BennyBlanco]

can't wait to be totally immersed in peoples lunch pics

 

[outunderthestars]

Alright, which one of you bastards sent Zuckerberg a copy of Ready Player One?

 

[GoodlifeX]

*checks calendar to make sure it is not April Fools Day.*

...damn it.

 

[Mindwipe]

Bad, bad, bad fucking news :-(

I can't wait for Facebook to put a kill switch in the rift to kill any experience it doesn't like or might cause it PR difficulties.

 

[TheRealTalker]

will be interesting on how Facebook handles hardware

 

[George Claw M.D.]

Posted for new page.

edit: Damn this thread is moving fast! Already almost at the bottom of the next page. LOL

Now this is a true megaton. That's how you megaton, people! So, this makes previous OR venture capital look like chump change. In fact, I went back to read OR's press release about their previous investment funding.

http://www.oculusvr.com/press/oculu...to-make-virtual-reality-a-commercial-reality/

IRVINE, CALIFORNIA (Dec 13, 2013) – Oculus VR, Inc., creators of the highly anticipated Oculus Rift, announced today that it has raised $75 million in Series B funding to finalize development of its virtual reality platform and ecosystem. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which also included significant additional investment from the Series A investors Spark Capital, Matrix Partners and Formation 8.

Founded in 2009 by angel investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz is world renowned for supporting the growth of emerging technology companies that change the world, including Facebook, Airbnb, Jawbone, Twitter and Skype. As part of the round, Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon will join Oculus VR’s board of directors...

Was this the end game since that earlier funding?

 

[DeadManWalking]

 

[HighJumpBoots]

I don't know why there is such a strong negative reaction. Now VR has a chance of branching out much farther than gaming. The thing was going to be niche as fuck even with Sony backing their own version of VR. Now we can start imagining the possible applications Facebook have in mind with this product.

Yeah, people are really gonna strap this thing to their head to play FarmVille and browse their feeds...

This acquisition makes no sense unless it's just an acquisition for the sake of saying that Facebook owns it. If they interfere with what Oculus had planned, this is bad news because that means that everything that was happening before this was worth nothing.

 

[ec0ec0]

People at NSA right now...

:O... picnic.

 

[Sammy Samusu]

That dude is buying everything. :lol

Stay away from Neogaf!

 

[Garcia]

The question is what exactly will be this "future" you speak of. Because I don't trust Facebook for fucking shit.

Same deal here.

 

[Symphonic]

Posting in a historic thread. Oculus a guaranteed success in all the wrong ways.

 

[Off-Kilter]

At first I was all:

But then:

 

[Alienous]

Way to sell out, dude.

 

[Dekopin]

Guys guys guys.

If this hasn't been said yet.

Expect an announcement by Facebook for a Google Glass competitor sometime soon.

 

[Coolwhip]

haha just saw this after I posted comment. EXACTLY what I thought too lol

Facebook doesn't want you to be social, they want you to look at their ads.

 

[PJV3]

Hopefully the VR ads will be skippable after 10 seconds.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Sony doesn't have the technology to make a decent VR solution that can compete with what is already available on the Rift. I really don't get why people keep bringing Sony up.

Sony's VR device will be for playing games. Oculus will probably be downscaled for the masses with low end PCs that just play social games, and update their Facebook status.

 

[Maedhros]

OMFG!? What the hell, this came from NOWHERE... Holy shit...

I don't know how I feel about it yet...

 

[Struct09]

This thread will be fun to return to in about two years

 

[Gamerloid]

I-I don't know what to think... I don't like this due to uncertainty