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Facebook acquires Oculus VR

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Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#791

Post by Loughla »

joeblau wrote: post #529
mwilcox wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. He is getting demolished there.

The comments on that reddit are insanely hilarious; The hatred is palpable.

It has been a laugh to be honest. I asked a friend of mine, who had very recently pre-ordered his second kit, last night if we was excited for the ability to poke people in virtual space. . . . Made me giggle.

Seriously, though. The hatred is very plain, and very understandable. The reason people loved the Oculus is because they felt they had some control over its future. They felt a part of it from the beginning, and were excited to be able to say that they were there to help. Now, though, it appears from the outside that they were used to front-fund a giant acquisition to make a very few people very, very wealthy.

So, essentially, those that I've spoken to are pissed less that it's Facebook, and more that it's any company at all. (It just happens to be Facebook, which is seen as the devil by 20-35 year olds)

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#793

Post by mbrzuzy »

I'm worried this will turn from a gaming oriented device to a general device. A device with a library of apps that require a facebook account to login and use and if you don't pay for some sort of paid version of an app have to deal with ads.

As soon as sony released information about their VR headset I was looking forward more to that one since it will be oriented around gaming.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#794

Post by Loughla »

31reasons wrote: post #563
FD3SA wrote: post #460

This is extremely disappointing. This technology had the potential to be much bigger than Facebook. The Occulus was poised to create an entirely new industry. They were pioneering a technology never before seen, with a legend like John Carmack pushing the state of the art. I cannot think of a more colossal mistake to make as a founder. Palmer Luckey has shown he has absolutely no faith in his ability nor that of his…

>>I believe Palmer Luckey will regret this decision. Absolutely. He has lost all credibility he had gained with such a cult following. I don't think he would be able to repeat it with the gamers and supporters again.

Devil's advocate here:

Which is bigger, the gamer and supporter group you speak of, or the facebook user base?

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#795

Post by Tloewald »

cweiss wrote: post #441
Tloewald wrote: post #188

This is a bit of a WTF. I don't think Facebook would necessarily "ruin" Occulus (although it likely will) but I don't really see the fit. Courtside seats at basketball games -- OK totally doable technically speaking, but the hard part would be licensing. If VR ever takes off in the mainstream it will probably end up becoming a "FRAND" kind of deal, where a bunch of key players pool their patents. Occulus will be a pl…

Here's the thing, if FB really wanted to do the 'courtside seats' thing, they should have licensed being able to stream the feeds through the FB web site - In terms of revenue stream, they'd make a boatload more $$ off of charging for that than they will by attaching it to a $1500 piece of headgear that you're not going get away with slipping on in your office to sneak a quick game.

The point is that to stream video from an NBA game you need to license it (you can't even carry pro photo gear into a professional sports venue without the appropriate credentials, let alone hook it up to the internet and stream video out of it). So this is totally pie-in-the-sky above and beyond the technical side of it which is perfectly feasible with off-the-shelf stuff today (Occulus would simply be a nicer HMD than most).

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#796

Post by tericho »

benched wrote: post #383
yid wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not everything needs final approval from the C-level suite (hell, that's their selling point to new hires.) Would you care to back that up with anything (not the part in parentheses)?

Why does everything on this site need to be backed up? Am I supposed to take a personal interest in your epistemic state as a matter of charity?

"Nullius in verba"

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#797

Post by Chirael »

elwell wrote: post #362
incision wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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." Honest question, do you have anything to base this idea that of "many many more times the resources" on? Have any companies been acquired by FB and immediately gone about pushing the envelope in ways that don't strictly line up the existing business…

> Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.

That type of thing is standard wording in an acquisition announcement - it's pretty boilerplate.

While it's possible we'll be pleasantly surprised, the history of small, innovative companies being acquired by much bigger companies does not /generally/ bode well for the smaller companies & their products.

If the Oculus product(s) is successful in any way, it would only be natural for FB to want some kind of hooks/integration, as just another surface area to push their brand/strategy/etc. Just like Google pushed "Plus" into everything regardless of whether it was really a good fit, because the parent corp is the owner/master and the subsidiary (or internal group) has to serve the strategies of its owner. It's not necessarily bad, it's just expected.

Maybe if FB weren't a public company we might expect them to be able to have a bit more of a hands-off approach, but since going public I'd say it's "unlikely".

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#798

Post by techwatching »

jobigoud wrote: post #686
techwatching wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so the hardware landgrab is in full effect. But... Facebook? Facebook is going to be competing with Sony? How does this line up with their competencies? With the track record they have with phones, I'm not holding my breath here. On the other hand, would you rather Google had bought them and siphoned off their team and energy into the Googleplex as they have done with other startups? Or - could Oculus have joined…

Why do they have to sell to anyone ? Can't a company live on its own these days? They had everyone cheering up behind them.

For sure; maybe the saw the writing on the wall though - i.e.: its hard for an independent to compete with Sony / MSFT / whatever other MegaCos enter the fray in terms of development resources, manufacturing scale, leverage with studios etc. If you think about it, how would Oculus have been able to finance a major production push (millions of units)?

On the flip side, competing like that might have been difficult --- but not impossible. The world needs more organizations willing to stand on their own two feet and try

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#800

Post by JabavuAdams »

angularly wrote: post #724
JabavuAdams wrote: post #580

For fuck's sake will you FB hating fanboys stop crying for a moment and realize that this is what makes VR legit. This. Is. An. Enormous. Opportunity. It's like the moment when I was teaching a game design course and I realized that all the students already used Dropbox. I though I was the only one who knew about Dropbox. If you want VR, then you should be happy. This just made VR real.

So only now that FB is on board it is real? Sony, Valve, Microsoft and god knows what other big companies, who were working hard on VR, wasn't real? I think everyone are pissed off, because they were rooting for the first mover and underdog that Oculus was.

>So only now that FB is on board it is real? Sony, Valve, Microsoft and god knows what other big companies, who were working hard on VR, wasn't real?

In a word, yes. Why? Because tech innovation is different from social change.

As of GDC 2013, it was obvious to early adopters that VR was closer than had been believed, and that there was a realistic road-map to getting there thanks to Oculus and Valve. However, there was no way to know whether mass market adoption would happen because the Rift DK1 still made lots of people nauseous, and non VR-o-philes could legitimately claim that it was just a bunch of dorks with ugly boxes on their heads. I mean, how pathetic is that? It could be mocked in the same way that the Segway was mocked, but that the Z-Board is not. Segway == loser dork. Z-Board == cool(ish). To be fair, I have a Rift DK1, and it's a great first step -- much better than any consumer level VR device I've seen in the last 15 years.

I didn't go to GDC 2014 last week, but this was also a huge tipping point. Two of my co-workers who had been debilitated by DK1 nausea just bought DK2's on the spot. That points to Oculus having removed a big obstacle to adoption. People aren't going to adopt something that makes them barf.

Sony has been working on headsets for over a decade, but has failed to deliver on the promise of VR until just now -- after being goaded by Oculus. So, yeah, competition's good, but these guys failed and failed in part because the world still wasn't ready for VR and they didn't want to commit the resources to this.

This move by Facebook signals that the world is or will soon be ready for VR. People who don't "get" VR will be like people who don't see the benefit in texting. Entitled to their opinion, but a diminishing fringe.

VR is poised to cross the chasm.

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