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Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

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Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#341

Post by chadillac »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #130
skore wrote: post #3

> "Facebook creeps me out." Whether or not you agree with his decision, having Notch pull away from talks with you creates an instant credibility "situation". It's also noteable that Notch had been meeting with the Oculus team just two weeks ago[0], was tweeting about them in rather gushing terms[1] and seemed incredibly inspired to work on VR ideas[2]. He is now the personification of the a near universal feeling of…

Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR. Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack. EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it…

I'm wondering why people in general think this is some kind of facebook integration stretch goal. Everyone is photoshoping friend requests into 3D Farmville screenshots and it's humorous and I get from a gamer perspective, but from other professionals in this industry I find it pretty shocking. Notch is vocal in his opposition, but it really just doesn't make sense to me. It's hardware and an SDK at the end of the day, and now it's in the hands of a leading tech company this is vanguarding OTHER difficult problems of their existing industry (and open sourcing large parts of it!).

I have the DK1, and I ordered the DK2 not even a week ago, I've been active in tinkering with Oculus for a while now and even did some Twitch.tv casts of BF3, DayZ, etc. and other games running through TriDef or VorpX. I'm about to start working on a project allowing MS Kinect usage to be broadcast in an Oculus compatible format for web consumption by Oculus users. So I'm pretty "in touch" with the tech at this point.

I see this move as FB ensuring a healthy portfolio and healthy future stock price for their investors by getting the jump on patents and technology of a sure fire success emerging market. I don't think you'll have 3D oculus web cam video calls or friend requests popping up in your flight sim, that's just rampant and misguided speculation.

If I had a choice about WHO bought Oculus the top of the list would be Valve. They already have Carmack, having Newell in the mix would be amazing and ensure the tech was in good hands. Facebook or Google would be next in line, and waaaaay down at the bottom of the list would be Sony, Microsoft, or EA (I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it).

tl;dr The entire community is acting like a bunch of idiots, stop it, you're embarrassing yourselves and showing your business management ignorance. If I was a company that made it big in the social boom and IPO'd but was facing a shrinking userbase on my life blood product, you better bet your ass I'd utilize my resources to diversify my business. Keeping your all your eggs in a single basket is a historically bad idea.

edit: also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK. Which I would consider FB pretty okay at... I won't say good... but okay will suffice, especially considering backwards compatibility for hardware/software of this type isn't a big concern.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#342

Post by duncan_bayne »

"And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition."

Actually, that is exactly what he did, and I'm somewhat surprised that folks didn't see this coming. If not FB, then it would have been one of the other large and evil (hi, Google!) tech companies.

The thing that makes me sad is that it wasn't one of the 'old media' companies, seeking to update their offerings for a new generation of customers.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#343

Post by rocky1138 »

Does Notch speak for Mojang? Can he say what Mojang will and will not do with Minecraft? Carl is the CEO.

I suppose Notch is still majority shareholder, but this is the type of thing I expect the leader of the company to say.

Imagine if Mojang decided to do differently than what Notch wanted here and ended up porting Minecraft to Oculus despite Notch's protests. What an interesting story that would be!

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#344

Post by Autobots »

chadillac wrote: post #341
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR. Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack. EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it…

I'm wondering why people in general think this is some kind of facebook integration stretch goal. Everyone is photoshoping friend requests into 3D Farmville screenshots and it's humorous and I get from a gamer perspective, but from other professionals in this industry I find it pretty shocking. Notch is vocal in his opposition, but it really just doesn't make sense to me. It's hardware and an SDK at the end of the da…

>I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it

I can't help but feel that is the same over-dramatization that people are having with Facebook buying Oculus. People like to think that EA is the devil, but in reality they are a game company and has plenty of resources including very smart people that could assist in bringing Oculus to market at least as well as Facebook.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#345

Post by rocky1138 »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #130
skore wrote: post #3

> "Facebook creeps me out." Whether or not you agree with his decision, having Notch pull away from talks with you creates an instant credibility "situation". It's also noteable that Notch had been meeting with the Oculus team just two weeks ago[0], was tweeting about them in rather gushing terms[1] and seemed incredibly inspired to work on VR ideas[2]. He is now the personification of the a near universal feeling of…

Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR. Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack. EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it…

All of the ways I can see involve Facebook being a supporting cast member, not a lead star.

A question: does Facebook need to only be facebook.com?

After all, there are plenty of examples in other industries of companies doing unrelated things and making a go of it. Consider Hitachi TVs and heavy equipment.

Facebook could launch Facebook Games to coincide with Oculus' consumer launch, providing a Steam-like service to pick up and play VR games, day one. Integration from this standpoint could be as innocuous as "Log in with your Facebook account" along side "Log in with your Google account" or "create an account".

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#346

Post by chadillac »

Autobots wrote: post #344
chadillac wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering why people in general think this is some kind of facebook integration stretch goal. Everyone is photoshoping friend requests into 3D Farmville screenshots and it's humorous and I get from a gamer perspective, but from other professionals in this industry I find it pretty shocking. Notch is vocal in his opposition, but it really just doesn't make sense to me. It's hardware and an SDK at the end of the da…

>I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it I can't help but feel that is the same over-dramatization that people are having with Facebook buying Oculus. People like to think that EA is the devil, but in reality they are a game company and has plenty of resources including very smart people that could assist in bringing Oculus to market at least as well as Facebook.

They also have a terrible track record in utilizing those resources in their given industry, I don't hate EA, I hate how EA does things in regards to their customers and products.

- Origin requirements

- Online requirements

- SimCity debacle

- buggy release after buggy release

- customer support is... turrible

I could go on and on, I don't even buy their stuff anymore, BF3 is and was the last of their games I plan on owning.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#347

Post by SkynetSystems »

chadillac wrote: post #341
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR. Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack. EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it…

I'm wondering why people in general think this is some kind of facebook integration stretch goal. Everyone is photoshoping friend requests into 3D Farmville screenshots and it's humorous and I get from a gamer perspective, but from other professionals in this industry I find it pretty shocking. Notch is vocal in his opposition, but it really just doesn't make sense to me. It's hardware and an SDK at the end of the da…

>I see this move as FB ensuring a healthy portfolio and healthy future stock price for their investors by getting the jump on patents and technology of a sure fire success emerging market.

That statement is precisely why this is such a big problem. Facebook getting their greedy paws on VR patents will all but limit innovation in VR and squeeze small players out of the market. There is nothing to like about this deal.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#348

Post by sillysaurus3 »

chadillac wrote: post #341
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR. Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack. EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it…

I'm wondering why people in general think this is some kind of facebook integration stretch goal. Everyone is photoshoping friend requests into 3D Farmville screenshots and it's humorous and I get from a gamer perspective, but from other professionals in this industry I find it pretty shocking. Notch is vocal in his opposition, but it really just doesn't make sense to me. It's hardware and an SDK at the end of the da…

tl;dr The entire community is acting like a bunch of idiots, stop it, you're embarrassing yourselves and showing your business management ignorance.

Calling anyone who disagrees with you an idiot and an embarrassment isn't good.

The central issue is that when Facebook begins to lose relevance, Zuck is going to yank the reins on Oculus as hard as possible to ensure Facebook stays relevant. You can see how Google did this with G+/YouTube integration.

VR is in its nascent stages, and Oculus has been synonymous with VR. Now instead of VR having a strong an independent company with Carmack near the helm, "VR" is a subservient division of Facebook.

Whether that turns out to be a good thing, well, time will tell. But to call people "ignorant idiots" for being worried is a little extreme, to say the least.

EDIT: You're also mistaken about this part (as I was):

also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK

The scaling crisis is software, not hardware. They appear to be planning some kind of Oculus VR MMO based on Carmack's tweets. See here for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471231

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#350

Post by djloche »

chris_mahan wrote: post #62
waterlesscloud wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, did I miss the part where Luckey and Carmack left Oculus?

Oh, they're cashing in right now. Look for them to exit in 6-12 months with millions.

Carmack has FU money twice over. This is about seeing his dreams made into reality.
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