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Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

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Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#51

Post by data-cat »

I don't get why everyone is hating. The fact of the matter is Facebook is about to put a lot of funding in to Oculus. With a lot of other big companies getting in to VR right now, like Sony and apparently Microsoft, Oculus will need that to stay relevant.

When I first found out about the buyout I thought of the same thing this article points out; Facebook also purchased Instagram and it seems to be doing just fine. If Facebook truly lets Oculus "be who they are going to be", I'm sure they will do just fine.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#52

Post by arrc »

Guys Facebook is no Microsoft or Google who only buy to soft kill the competitor.

FB is different just look at their past acquisitions like Instagram and others, they all survived and are still in active development and rolling out new features.

If it were MS/Google acquiring Oculus, negative reactions would have been justified.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#53

Post by LoganCale »

baby wrote: post #47
jonlucc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that they think the public is becoming more alright with the acquisition because the anger is slowing. It's like they don't understand that after all bad news, the stories and comments about it will wane over time.

The anger slowed in a matter of hours though, it was pretty fast.

Not really. Pretty much everyone who was angry is still angry. They just stopped posting about it constantly, because what's the point?

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#54

Post by kyleblarson »

jader201 wrote: post #9

> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. > If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are. The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general --…

It's easy to take the moral high ground when you don't have a three comma offer sitting on the table in front of you.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#55

Post by beshrkayali »

> “We assumed that the reaction would be negative, especially from our core community. Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. I don’t think we expected it to be so negative.”

So basically *k the core community? What Oculus founders don't understand is that without this core community they wouldn't have existed in the way they are right now, probably not even approached by Facebook or anyone else.

Sure, it could be good to the future of Oculus, what do I know, but it's a big FU to the core community, specially that we've been disregarded like this.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#56

Post by danabramov »

dragontamer wrote: post #37
Geee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you see it? Facebook can't currently monetize face-to-face interactions, but in virtual reality they can. The purchase makes a lot of sense for Facebook. Facebook's business model is to monetize human interactions. Today, most of human interaction happens over the Internet (with messages and images), and in the future, it will happen in virtual environments. VR will be the ultimate platform, and Facebook wants…

This is what people fear from Facebook. Selling out to Microsoft or Sony would have been "monetize by making awesome games". Selling out to Facebook means virtual reality ads will penetrate everywhere you walk.

Do you seriously believe this? Then there will be competitors without ads.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#57

Post by stingraycharles »

codeflo wrote: post #42
bstar77 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. How can you go in understanding that you are going to upset your core community and expect anything other than a negative response?

This is the part that stuck out for me as well. They quite plainly state that they knew this would alienate their existing audience, and that they were perfectly fine with that.

And in the end, it's their choice anyway. People respond mostly negatively because of their expectations about how Facebook will monetize this. It's now up to Facebook to prove them wrong.

I personally think it's not going to be as bad. Oculus has a clear path to monetization, while Facebook, with their other products, have always been struggling to monetize their user base, which lead them to implement controversial features like Beacon. In this case, all they have to do is back off and make sure the right people are leading Oculus -- and so far, I think they are doing fine with that.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#58

Post by vezzy-fnord »

arrc wrote: post #52

Guys Facebook is no Microsoft or Google who only buy to soft kill the competitor. FB is different just look at their past acquisitions like Instagram and others, they all survived and are still in active development and rolling out new features. If it were MS/Google acquiring Oculus, negative reactions would have been justified.

All of FB's past acquisitions before Oculus (just Instagram and WhatsApp) were social media platforms, precisely what FB specialized in and knows how to work with. They don't need to do any radical shift with them, they already serve as private data and analytics incubators.

Oculus is a completely unrelated avenue for them, and one can only wonder what their intentions are. Zuckerberg already made a PR statement that the company intends on turning Oculus into a social platform of some sort, so this does raise some eyebrows.

As much as I have ethical quandaries with Google, I'd be more content if they had acquired Oculus.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#59

Post by daenz »

officemonkey wrote: post #10

I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it. Instagram definitely has location and social graph data to exploit. But Oculus? What is FB going to do with that? I think most people still think of FB as the site and advertising sales for the site. But if you see FB as a conglomerate like Google, Apple, and Sony then it makes more sense. FB is diversifying, buying up promising technology with t…

> I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it.

I've been thinking about this Facebook acquisition for a little while, and in my mind, the only play that makes sense for Facebook is to become the login gateway to Oculus games. For many Windows games, there's Windows Live...a social-ish, login service that you literally have to register and sign in with in order to play the game. You cannot opt out. If Facebook became this... "Sign in with Facebook"... for all commercial Oculus games, they would have a guaranteed mindshare on the future younger generations of gamers. And becoming just the gatekeepers would more or less let them be hands-off with the actual Oculus direction as a company, which is in line with what's been said so far.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#60

Post by Vermeulen »

officemonkey wrote: post #10

I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it. Instagram definitely has location and social graph data to exploit. But Oculus? What is FB going to do with that? I think most people still think of FB as the site and advertising sales for the site. But if you see FB as a conglomerate like Google, Apple, and Sony then it makes more sense. FB is diversifying, buying up promising technology with t…

I am really hoping that your right, that it is them becoming a tech conglomerate rather than trying to integrate with their other products. But what worries me still, is I don't see a future where Facebook will keep the Oculus as a open system. If it's successful there is no doubt they will try to own the software/services with it - they won't just sell the hardware, then let PC developers (and open marketplaces, like Steam) get all the profit
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