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Facebook acquires Oculus VR

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Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#531

Post by simlevesque »

Crito wrote: post #182
neotek wrote: post #62

Why on earth would Oculus sell at all, least of all to Facebook? What possible reason could Facebook have to purchase a company so far removed from its core competency? People in the /r/oculus reddit are already expressing strong feelings of betrayal - eighty comments in under ten minutes, none positive. What a bizarre move.

"Facebook is the biggest name in social media." -> "Google, another tech powerhouse, is trying to push their social media offerings." -> "Google has 3 things that Facebook does not: Email, Youtube, and Glass." -> "Facebook is comfortable with the first two, since they have been there for years, but Glass is threatening to them." -> "Facebook needs their own 'Glass', in case Glass pans out." My prediction: Glass will…

So Facebook has a search engine ?

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#532

Post by prawn »

I wonder if Oculus felt threatened enough by Valve and Sony to jump at any solid opportunity to aggressively ramp up their development, hiring and so on?

Sony has the brand name and Valve have a pretty solid community. If either were out there with as-strong or superior technology, Oculus might've been irrelevant within 2-3 years.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#533

Post by Taylorious »

Mz wrote: post #72

Someone shared this with me with the words "RIP Oculus." Can the megacorps please stop eating our young? Microsoft has a terrible history of buying up companies and then killing the project for some reason. Posterous got bought (I don't recall by whom) and killed. These big companies tend to not develop this stuff. They just eat it.

I don't think it's fair to blame the megacorps and not the companies that are selling out. All these startups talk a good game about being cutting edge, disruptive, a passionate place to work etc. but it's all BS. Engineers work their asses off working on something they believe in and the minute some megacorp waves a big check in front of the founders they sell out. They might be passionate about their product but they are still more passionate about giant piles of money.

It's stuff like this that makes me not want to work for a startup. These guys had a great business. Everyone loved their product. Even the people who got physically sick from using it still thought it was cool and wanted them to succeed. They had a perfectly viable company that could have been very profitable on its own. But hey who wants all the responsibility and work of having your own profitable company when you can just sell out...

Let's not even get into how unethical it is to use something like KickStarter to get you started and then turn around and sell out for billions a couple years later before you even ship a consumer product.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#535

Post by jamesie »

thuuuomas wrote: post #466
frostmatthew wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now Facebook can ad ads featuring your friend's faces in games Facebook doesn't run ads for the sake of running ads...it requires money to run a social platform that's completely free for a billion+ users. It's unlikely they'll be handing out Rifts for free so they can rely on sales of the devices to generate revenue from the Oculus division.

Except that hardware has very slim margins, & all the woes associated with shipping a physical product. Ad revenue is cheap & easy.

Hardware is how you deliver eyeballs. It's why android was bought. Oculus will be a medium for delivering eyeballs as will Google Glass.

If there was an alternative to google search Apple would default to that search engine. They don't need the billions they make from Google search being in iOS.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#536

Post by Rizz »

s3r3nity wrote: post #177
selmnoo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am shattered right now. I was so happy for Oculus VR, I wanted it to become big, I wanted it to become something truly special. And now this happens. I'm horrified and speechless. This is the day I stop cheering for Oculus VR and get behind Sony's Morpheus: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/19/tech/gaming-gadgets/sony-morph... Notch on this deal: "We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I j…

>I am shattered right now. Oh come on -- this is just ridiculous. They (Oculus) now have many many more times the resources at their disposal than before to make countless imaginative projects. I know i'll get down votes for saying this, but if Google was the buyer, there would be much more positive comments here. Use some rational analysis here, folks.

They now have only one place to get funding, before they could go up to pretty much any investor and get funding. Maybe it wouldn't have lasted if the VR turns out not as good as it's hyped to be, but for now I don't see why they need the resources of Facebook. Of course they're readying for a product launch, a product that appears to become popular, so they'll need to invest in production capacity and materials, but is a takeover really necessary and the best way to achieve that?

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#537

Post by psbp »

briantakita wrote: post #472
enneff wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ray Kurzweil was hired by Google's current management to work at Google. How is this in any way analogous to Carmack's situation at Oculus, now Facebook?

The similarities are they are legendary & forward thinking technologists given a large amount of capital to pursue their passion and scale their vision. Corporate title & organizition wise, they are different. Though I doubt Kurzweil worries too much about the current Ads, Search, Email, & Android platform. I would expect his role to be more forward thinking. I get the impression Carmack has a forward thinking role a…

I'm not sure how true this is, but I recently watched an anti-google documentary about their book-scanning business and they said sources familiar with Larry Page claim that he had no interest in Google as a business but rather was attempting to achieve advanced AI through Google.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#539

Post by joeblau »

This is an interesting view from an investment perspective. The Internet basically bootstrapped Oculus VR via Kickstarter and the result is that the founders get a huge payout while the real risk takers in the product get an Oculus VR or whatever their Kickstarter reward was.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#540

Post by Yhippa »

aviraldg wrote: post #256

I don't want a "general-purpose VR headset". There are already many devices described that way (that work well enough for that purpose.) I wanted something built exclusively for the extreme requirements of gaming, and I feel this acquisition is going to distract the Oculus team from that. Facebook has no experience whatsoever in that domain, and the only way I see Oculus benefiting from this is the huge cash reserves…

I think this bothers me the most. Us gamers had our shiny new toy and then it got taken away so everybody can play with it now. I bet Facebook will figure out a way to subsidize this to get it in all of their user's hands and then gaming will take a big backseat to the Facebook Experience (TM).
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