Interesting... Is this a play against Google Glass ?
I'm not sure how Facebook could benefit from Oculus VR unless they're starting a completely unrelated business (never mind what Zuckerberg says in the post).
It seems like it would be an odd play against glass, because of the differences of VR vs AR. With VR you're in another world, and that doesn't seem like facebook's goal, which would be to add facebook information with the rest of the world. So it seems unlikely unless they're planning to completely overhaul the project and make it AR instead of VR.
Well, if Google's going to be a robotics and AI company, it's not irrational for Facebook to go into telepresence as a kind of next-gen communications property. They've got the cash to go big, and their dependence on a single, easily-substituted service as their source of revenue is about as big an Achilles' heel as any company can have.
The reason why people haven't commented yet because we can't find the words. I have no immediate idea what can FB do with Oculus VR, even if I read Zuck's comments.
Facebook knows that Facebook.com is toping off. It wants to spread its reach. I really don't think there will be any crossover between Oculus and Facebook, just like there isen't any crossover between Windows and XBox.
Facebook needs to move to Oculus, not try to tie Oculus to what Facebook currently is. If they're thinking more that way, there's hope. I have very little faith in them allowing anything remotely awesome to come out of this, though.
> But this is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face -- just by putting on goggles in your home.
> This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.
This seems like the money quote. Basically they want to have everyone share virtual experiences together within your network.
I'm not a huge fan of FB either, but IMO, actually looking at it that way is kind of exciting. Imagine Oculus VR + Project Tango = "experience" physical places you otherwise might not. Or if it could be used to shop Amazon Fresh as a regular grocery store (sometimes I don't know exactly what I need/want, and I like just walking through the aisles to see)? There's a lot that this could potentially open up if used as a connectivity/communication hardware; but I agree, that they should nail down their core competency first before pursuing other use-cases.
Except Tango didn't come from Facebook.Facebook has never made anything new aside from new standards in marketing and scummery. Google at least sometimes toy with the idea of things being open and is heavily investing in R&D other than just "where to place the ad so that it's always seen".
> Basically they want to have everyone share virtual experiences together within your network.
Over proprietary facebook-only protocols, on their proprietary software, using proprietary device drivers, with systemic data collection, and virtual reality advertising.
Yeah, no thanks. Occulus was poised to be revolutionary because it was going to be bigger than one headset, it was going to be an open platform for an entire generation of VR tech. Now, it is only facebook tech, and that is a shame.
> Occulus was poised to be revolutionary because it was going to be bigger than one headset, it was going to be an open platform for an entire generation of VR tech. Now, it is only facebook tech, and that is a shame
Oculus was and is a hardware company, with plans to expand their content marketplace (share.oculusvr.com). I do not see how Oculus was an open platform for VR tech, that's giving them too much credit.
What is the wonderland you live in that makes you think an insanely expensive platform (yes for the average person the Oculus is crazy expensive) with expensive to create content and little use outside a static environment would be open forever? Can you name anything massively successful with wide adoption that has those features?
If it wasn't facebook it would have been Google/Msft/etc...
The vitriol to this announcement is really staggering given the whole hacker ethos around here. Both of these two CEOs are by this community's standards the most hacker of the hacker.
There are few reasons, Microsoft is not bad in gaming. They have Xbox/Kinect and they understand gaming. They are also not making money from user's data by tracking them by whatever means necessary. I also respect Microsoft Research that does some cool tech research that does not necessary get into their products. Social network companies are simply creepy because they make money off of your behaviors and Facebook is doing it as their primary business.
Remind me what did they do for (and with) PC gaming in the last 10 years.And how do you know they aren't making data of tracking you? What do you think Bing is about? Or their massive push towards the POWER OF THE CLOUD? Or the extremely closed Windows Phone platform?
To be honest, this announcement made me realize how much what I was expecting was unrealistic. Sometimes you believe in miracles.
For the other company that I wouldn't have minded buying them, I'd say Valve getting back their CTO, Sony ready to provide the only VR platform of the market and using Oculus as a test bed, or even Samsung or Intel.
What's to prevent more open initiatives to also benefit from a possibly huge uptick in development on VR now that Facebook put it's weight behind it?
Don't get me wrong, I'm just as upset about this news as most people here seem to be, I'm just trying to see different perspectives, as I'm not quite cynical enough to think that Oculus VR only did this for the money...
> What's to prevent more open initiatives to also benefit from a possibly huge uptick in development on VR now that Facebook put it's weight behind it?
Probably Facebook patent trolling. That is the problem with modern innovation - if you are late to the party you get shut out and crushed by the legal bullshit. Any new player would somehow have to navigate around any patent Oculus / Sony / Valve / etc has on similar technologies.
The irony for me is that interacting with other people is the last reason I want a Rift. I want a fully immersive total escape from reality. When I play games, the last thing I want to be is "social."
This is the first indication, to me at least, that Facebook is going to be pursuing the "Bell Labs" style strategy that Google has been. For example, self-driving cars and robots are great new technologies and industries but have less than obvious connections to Googles core business. Facebook now would seem to be doing the same.
I don't think they're "great new technologies" so much as "pie in the sky" goal-spread diversification that shareholders like to see. There is a cultural aspect of the stock market where a range of goals is seen as more stable than, you know, getting real good at search and ads.
I suspect this in Facebook-OVR. FB might ruin it, a la Yahoo-Flickr, or leave them alone, but Facebook isn't really making headlines these days, and OVR is, so now every OVR story will now have to mention Facebook. It may not turn out this way, but there's no reason why the pairing has to be tightly coupled.
I actually had the opposite impression of stock investors, that they vastly preferred the "just getting better at what you do" than "pie-in-the-sky", but that's just an impression.
Tightly-coupled Facebook-OVR would shock me, definitely.
That was my thought as well. Just like Microsoft long ago diversified into hardware and services, and Google is doing Calico, self-driving cars, etc. FB sees value in the diversification strategy. I'm doubting they'll be doing Facebook logins or "post to your timeline" stuff with this anytime soon, if ever. Facebook is trying to get more fingers in more pies, which makes perfect sense.
As far as Oculus goes, this probably takes a whole heap of pressure off of them. Now they can act like one of the units of Bell, and just work on the thing, rather than worrying about pleasing investors or turning a profit anytime soon. Assuming FB doesn't do anything crazy, this will only help them and the tech.
Edit: the thing that should be worrying both companies is the potential developer backlash. Not everyone loves FB, as the comments here attest. Perhaps an investment rather than an acquisition would have stirred up less vitriol.
The problem with that strategy is that Facebook doesn't have the same firm financial foothold that allows Google and Microsoft to burn cash on moonshot projects. Facebook is profitable but ~$7b in revenue leaves less margin for error than Google's ~$59b or Microsoft's ~$77b.
I view this more as eBay buying Skype - no clear synergy (at least yet - I'll keep watching), unlikely to yield any. To me, this is a silly acquisition - if I was a shareholder, I'd be angry that they spent $2b on this. Of course, after you spend $19b or so on Whatsapp, anything smaller suddenly seem reasonable. :)
Best early random guess is this is defensive against Google Glass. Basically the world is going to stay mobile but the form factor will move from phones to glasses. FB won't be caught lagging this time (like they did from Web to Mobile).
1. Despite similarity in the fundamental form factor, Glass and the Oculus Rift are trying to solve pretty different engineering problems. Rift is all about trying to be low latency, capture motion accurately, and be sufficiently high resolution to make an experience feel immersive. Glass is about battery life, hardware miniaturization, and a display that you can see in daylight without it obscuring your vision. While, if both products were successful, they might eventually start to converge towards each other, owning one does not really help you solve the challenges of the other.
2. Facebook is threatened by Google Glass now? Glass has really, really failed to take off and become a big thing. It's hard for me to imagine that Facebook felt the need to do a multi-billion dollar acquisition to position themselves defensively against a product whose main accomplishment is coining the term "glassholes." Facebook manufactures its own opprobrium in house, very successfully. They don't need to acquire it.
Google Glass's proposition is fundamentally "wearable Facebook". I don't think this is a defensive move; it's a "Oh, it's obvious in hindsight; why aren't we doing that, too?" response. Oculus Rift wasn't competing against it, but a Facebook-owned Oculus Rift is a lot more likely to.
In effect, Facebook is asking for the second mover position. There's an old saw about how the first mover in a new market actually fails because he runs into all the problems, but the second mover succeeds because he learns from the first mover's mistakes. That could easily be happening here.
I think its about the fact that very few software companies can simply birth a hardware engineering division like Google. Its arguable that even Google struggles with it at times.
For a software-oriented company such as Facebook and a fairly new one and not the greatest on the balance sheet, its undoubtedly much harder for them to enter the hardware space than Google.
Have you no IMAGINATION!? Can't you picture a Farmville where you can actually see the teats on the cow right in front of you? See the corn waving in a virtual breeze? Best of all, see a beautifully rendered image of your money go up in flames each time you make an in-game purchase!
I'll hazard a guess, though Zuckerburg more or less lays it out. They'll create the Metaverse (as described in Snow Crash), but they'll own it. You will meet virtually with friends on the Facebook platform, and they will own it all the way through to the consumer hardware.
"... for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21, 2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain milestones."
And free publicity, now everyone is gonna hear about Oculus. This is truly a good news, I don't see why people are so eager to hate on this acquisition.
Ah, I get it! SecondLife 2.0 now with facebook integration.
Which may not be a bad idea on its own, but I don't think people would be that interested in it for a long time... (quicker/better/easier mobile integration is what people would appreciate imho) I may be completely wrong though, maybe it's the new thing.
I'll be surprised if John stays on past his golden handcuff period. The amount of money he stands to make after joining Oculus less than a year ago is certainly large.
He's in the lucky position of being able to pick pretty much any project he wants to work on and be accepted. From what I know about him, the thing he really cares about is pushing the tech forward, and as long as Oculus VR can do that, he'll stay on board. If he gets too stifled there, he'll probably jump ship over to another VR project.
I sincerely hope this is a good thing for Oculus, but it could definitely go badly too...
I really hope Facebook has plans for VR besides mobile gaming. I don't want to see a technology that could really help high-end gaming just be used on phones.
Same reaction here. I'd say more about my opinion of Facebook and Zuckerberg business capabilities and behaviour, but it would add nothing to a civil discussion...
With the current Oculus kit? You mean the dev-kit 1? Because I have one of those and aside from playing around developing games on it for when a real version is shipped, I wouldn't pay $25 for it. Now I'm super worried that Sony is going to ruin VR by giving us a shitty version that makes everyone hate VR again.
What I heard was that the display is on-par with the second dev kit. (My mistake calling it their current kit; that was misleading.) 1080p, smooth head tracking, no noticeable lag.
People who have had the opportunity to see both the DK2 and the Morpheus have almost all thought the Morpheus a better device. I think Luckey et. al. saw the handwriting on the wall and sold for the best deal they could while they still could into a market where they won't need to compete with Sony, MS, and Google directly.
They have no magic and they know it. Sony will trounce them technologically. Not getting to market before Sony is a fatal shortfall. I think they knew all along that they'd fall short going toe to toe with the big guns. There is something about Luckey that has always said huckster to me.
On the other hand, games are but the miniscule tip of the tip of the VR iceberg and the new placement with respect to the larger market could benefit grownups like me why could give a rat's a about games and social but see endless passive entertainment possibilities. Of course, Sony is there to beat in those domains as well.
This is really really smart. I'd guess it's a play for a talented team, and a bet that they can become a leader in an industry that will be revolutionary sooner rather than later.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 370 ms ] threadI'm not sure how Facebook could benefit from Oculus VR unless they're starting a completely unrelated business (never mind what Zuckerberg says in the post).
I bet rules that limited other social games from promoting themselves on Facebook won't be as stringent as for Oculus games.
> This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.
This seems like the money quote. Basically they want to have everyone share virtual experiences together within your network.
Over proprietary facebook-only protocols, on their proprietary software, using proprietary device drivers, with systemic data collection, and virtual reality advertising.
Yeah, no thanks. Occulus was poised to be revolutionary because it was going to be bigger than one headset, it was going to be an open platform for an entire generation of VR tech. Now, it is only facebook tech, and that is a shame.
Oculus was and is a hardware company, with plans to expand their content marketplace (share.oculusvr.com). I do not see how Oculus was an open platform for VR tech, that's giving them too much credit.
If it wasn't facebook it would have been Google/Msft/etc...
The vitriol to this announcement is really staggering given the whole hacker ethos around here. Both of these two CEOs are by this community's standards the most hacker of the hacker.
Hackers HATED MSFT only a decade ago - and many still do - and they do just as much shady crap as facebook does.
The whole hate here is irrational in my opinion.
For the other company that I wouldn't have minded buying them, I'd say Valve getting back their CTO, Sony ready to provide the only VR platform of the market and using Oculus as a test bed, or even Samsung or Intel.
Don't get me wrong, I'm just as upset about this news as most people here seem to be, I'm just trying to see different perspectives, as I'm not quite cynical enough to think that Oculus VR only did this for the money...
Probably Facebook patent trolling. That is the problem with modern innovation - if you are late to the party you get shut out and crushed by the legal bullshit. Any new player would somehow have to navigate around any patent Oculus / Sony / Valve / etc has on similar technologies.
Would there be a chance that Oculus included in the deal some stipulations about this?
I suspect this in Facebook-OVR. FB might ruin it, a la Yahoo-Flickr, or leave them alone, but Facebook isn't really making headlines these days, and OVR is, so now every OVR story will now have to mention Facebook. It may not turn out this way, but there's no reason why the pairing has to be tightly coupled.
Tightly-coupled Facebook-OVR would shock me, definitely.
As far as Oculus goes, this probably takes a whole heap of pressure off of them. Now they can act like one of the units of Bell, and just work on the thing, rather than worrying about pleasing investors or turning a profit anytime soon. Assuming FB doesn't do anything crazy, this will only help them and the tech.
Edit: the thing that should be worrying both companies is the potential developer backlash. Not everyone loves FB, as the comments here attest. Perhaps an investment rather than an acquisition would have stirred up less vitriol.
1. Despite similarity in the fundamental form factor, Glass and the Oculus Rift are trying to solve pretty different engineering problems. Rift is all about trying to be low latency, capture motion accurately, and be sufficiently high resolution to make an experience feel immersive. Glass is about battery life, hardware miniaturization, and a display that you can see in daylight without it obscuring your vision. While, if both products were successful, they might eventually start to converge towards each other, owning one does not really help you solve the challenges of the other.
2. Facebook is threatened by Google Glass now? Glass has really, really failed to take off and become a big thing. It's hard for me to imagine that Facebook felt the need to do a multi-billion dollar acquisition to position themselves defensively against a product whose main accomplishment is coining the term "glassholes." Facebook manufactures its own opprobrium in house, very successfully. They don't need to acquire it.
In effect, Facebook is asking for the second mover position. There's an old saw about how the first mover in a new market actually fails because he runs into all the problems, but the second mover succeeds because he learns from the first mover's mistakes. That could easily be happening here.
hardware is such a different skill and mindset than software, it's not even funny.
For a software-oriented company such as Facebook and a fairly new one and not the greatest on the balance sheet, its undoubtedly much harder for them to enter the hardware space than Google.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/25/facebook-to-buy-oculus-vr-m...
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/facebook-to-acquire-...
Which may not be a bad idea on its own, but I don't think people would be that interested in it for a long time... (quicker/better/easier mobile integration is what people would appreciate imho) I may be completely wrong though, maybe it's the new thing.
I sincerely hope this is a good thing for Oculus, but it could definitely go badly too...
EDIT: for some laughs have a read of the Kotaku thread on facebook : https://www.facebook.com/kotaku/posts/10102759696153589 people are not happy
Brought to you by Facebook.
Just wait till you see the new Farmville.
They have no magic and they know it. Sony will trounce them technologically. Not getting to market before Sony is a fatal shortfall. I think they knew all along that they'd fall short going toe to toe with the big guns. There is something about Luckey that has always said huckster to me.
On the other hand, games are but the miniscule tip of the tip of the VR iceberg and the new placement with respect to the larger market could benefit grownups like me why could give a rat's a about games and social but see endless passive entertainment possibilities. Of course, Sony is there to beat in those domains as well.
Do you have any reputable links to support this?
This is really really smart. I'd guess it's a play for a talented team, and a bet that they can become a leader in an industry that will be revolutionary sooner rather than later.