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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

#101

Post by bane »

danabramov wrote: post #66
daenz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

Seriously? The only reason to own a VR problem is to stick in “sign in via some website that used to be popular in the old web“ button? What would it give them anyway? Drive up Facebook usage on the old web? I don't understand why most people think Facebook is so dumb in this thread.

> I don't understand why most people think Facebook is so dumb in this thread.

Because Facebook is dumb. For all the talk of vision, FB is nothing more than organic growth around Zuck's desire to get lists of fellow students on his campus into a directory.

FB in 2006 is barely a different experience than FB in 2014. And none of the changes made so far can be charitably described as "smart".

For all the wealth of information they have on people, they aren't even that good at placing relevant ads or getting clicks. The main innovations FB is credited with is finding more and more ways to mine and exploit user's data.

More importantly, the things that Facebook is good at doing have little to nothing to do with building a persistent on-line world (and decades of experience have shown that in general these are not things that the bulk of people want to inhabit as a replacement for the real world. Walking around a virtual art gallery sucks in comparison to just flipping through a bunch of photos).

Facebook and innovation almost never appear positively in the same sentence.

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

#102

Post by jader201 »

wiremine wrote: post #75
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 --…

> 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 -- should have nothing to do with Oculus' vision. Honest question: why shouldn't VR be in Facebook's vision? _Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates VR. I'm not excited…

> I get the frustration about the short-term impact on gaming, but I don't (yet?) understand why this is a bad move for VR in general...

That's just it. Fans of Oculus and the Rift were (mostly) interested in the gaming of VR. You have a point, that Facebook can certainly leverage VR to expand their product. But I think it's not in the direction previous/current fans (or even followers) of Oculus were/are interested in.

I'm not necessarily questioning whether this move is in the best interest of Facebook or Oculus. I think both companies will benefit from this long-term.

My point is that this isn't in the interest of the fans/followers of Oculus, and there's no explanation as to how Oculus would be surprised by the negative reaction of those outside the core community.

In fact, the only ones I can think of that would not react to this move negatively are fans of Facebook, and those invested in Facebook and Oculus.

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

#104

Post by mycousinvinny »

bane wrote: post #85
s3r3nity wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by that -- The Halo & Call of Duty franchises have been getting by on great social multiplayer experiences. (Halo also has a great campaign, but I digress...) The great experiment & test of your theory would be to see something like Titanfall only last a year or so, since it's ALL a social/multiplier experience. In theory I think social gaming has strong networking effects that have to potent…

Well remember, for every successful social game, there's a Star Wars Galaxies or Age of Conan. Or if successful, try to play Mario Kart Wii or Mario Kart DS. Suddenly tens of millions of gamers get $0 of value out of their purchase because a company has decided it's time for gamers to move on and make their next purchase. The problem of course is that most companies don't go the way of Quake3 and let people run their…

How can you cite 2nd Life as an example when they have barely kept 50,000 concurrent users online at their peak?

How can you forget to cite the father of modern day MMO's, EverQuest, which is on expansion 20? The best MMO ever created (vanilla through velious). The only damn reason WoW is around is because of the greatness of EQ.

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

#106

Post by rayiner »

evan_ wrote: post #95
Geee wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't compete with 'without ads' business model. Look around: Google search, Youtube, Facebook etc. They all had first mover advantage and there's no way someone can compete with these. These services (and companies) operate around the idea of giving away free candy and locking everyone in with network effects. This is what will happen to VR as well under Facebook's control.

Maybe it's harder to be #1 without being free but there are many video sites competing with YouTube that do pretty well. Vimeo, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, etc- they're not FREE but they're still very popular. There's no reason to believe that Facebook's VR network will be the only one. Also, none of the products you listed had first mover advantage. They're all excellent examples of things that upset a formerly d…

For movie distribution, network lock in doesn't matter so much. But for video sharing they do, and for VR they really will. Competing with Netflix is a lot easier than competing with Facebook or YouTube for that reason.

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

#107

Post by bane »

Geee wrote: post #82
danabramov wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can't compete with 'without ads' business model. Look around: Google search, Youtube, Facebook etc. They all had first mover advantage and there's no way someone can compete with these. These services (and companies) operate around the idea of giving away free candy and locking everyone in with network effects. This is what will happen to VR as well under Facebook's control.

> You can't compete with 'without ads' business model. Look around: Google search, Youtube, Facebook etc. They all had first mover advantage and there's no way someone can compete with these.

Nonsense, there are dozens of very expensive data providers and search companies out there who do very well for themselves thank you very much.

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

#109

Post by superuser2 »

Geee wrote: post #27
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 --…

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…

Other businesses that are about monetizing human interaction: telephony (pay us to talk to people), restaurants (pay us for a venue to have a conversation/date, show off your wealth), clothing (pay us to increase your apparent status/attractiveness), theater and movies (pay us to have an activity with your friends/date), beyond-low-end housing (pay us so you can entertain and impress and be in a city with lots of humans to interact with).

You say this like it's a dirty, disgusting thing to do, but is Facebook really that different from all of these industries in terms of wanting to monetize human interaction?

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

#110

Post by wiremine »

teacup50 wrote: post #87
wiremine wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 -- should have nothing to do with Oculus' vision. Honest question: why shouldn't VR be in Facebook's vision? _Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates VR. I'm not excited…

> _Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates VR. Are they? Why is VR inevitable? We already went through this once in the 90s, and the same truths are still true: nobody wants to put a face-covering headset just to communicate with other people.

> Why is VR inevitable?

Good point, I agree that I am making a big assumption.

That said, I don't think the argument that "it didn't work before" is valid. I don't think people want face-covering headsets that _suck_.

If I can wear an _awesome_ headset and have a virtual conversation with my family across the country, I'd purchase one in a heartbeat.

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