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Facebook’s $2B Oculus deal happened over the last five days

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Re: Facebook’s $2B Oculus deal happened over the last five days

#31

Post by lazyjones »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #21
christoph wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people should be too harsh on Palmer. He's still very young. To me it feels like Facebook bought this insanely cheap. It's $17bn cheaper than Whatsapp. I'm sure there was some smooth talking involved in the deal. I couldn't help but think of the billion dollars scene from The Social Network[1] when I heard about the deal. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0n7vTLz1U

Palmer could have made far more money by waiting. Maybe he was tired of Oculus.

Serious question - why would he need any more money? And how certain would that have been?

I can't imagine anyone who hasn't been deep into "FU money" for a while actually choosing "perhaps far more than 2 billion later" over "2 billion now".

Re: Facebook’s $2B Oculus deal happened over the last five days

#32

Post by dsl »

froo wrote: post #26

Sony announces Project Morpheus 6 days ago. Oculus sells to Facebook today and deal started 5 days ago (apparently). This is either a) Founders saw writing on the wall and decided to get paid early rather than have to compete with a company with much deeper pockets and a preexisting fanbase. b) Facebook saw that Sony's announcement validated the space and decided to buy the company with most mindshare at the moment a…

Even back before the Xbox One was announced people were digging up Microsoft patents on things like eliminating interference between "video headsets" and wireless controllers being used in close proximity. Thats a pretty late stage problem to be solving.

Also remember that Microsoft and Facebook have a pretty strong working relationship. This could be Facebook taking Oculus off the market in exchange for a bigger cut of ad revenues on Facebook search.

Re: Facebook’s $2B Oculus deal happened over the last five days

#33

Post by kevingadd »

Pxtl wrote: post #30
kevingadd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been trying to get VR right for decades, and Oculus's developer units were probably the first remotely accessible devices to let you experience something that approximates good VR. Reportedly the second-generation oculus devices are even better. The criteria for 'good' here are things like low latency, good position tracking, low display persistence, etc. Getting those things wrong causes headaches, nause…

> People have been trying to get VR right for decades, Because display technology wasn't there yet. The thing that made Oculus possible wasn't some miraculous development at Oculus VR, but the fact that smartphones created a massive market of low-cost high-quality super-high-pixel-density tiny screens.

The cellphone market pushing displays forward was only one ingredient. Cellphones don't have low-latency, low-persistence displays, and they don't have the kind of specialized optics needed for a VR headset, and they don't do low-latency high-precision orientation/position tracking.

Re: Facebook’s $2B Oculus deal happened over the last five days

#36

Post by ctdonath »

psbp wrote: post #3

"Zuckerberg explained that he felt that Oculus represented an entirely new post-PC and post-mobile platform." He's probably right. While Google and others are focusing on half-baked wearables as their key to the future, facebook just bought a huge chunk of the most likely successor.

Thing is, Google is pursuing wearables as pursuant to its core competency: data mining. What does VR have to do with Facebook's core competency?

Re: Facebook’s $2B Oculus deal happened over the last five days

#38

Post by kailuowang »

froo wrote: post #26

Sony announces Project Morpheus 6 days ago. Oculus sells to Facebook today and deal started 5 days ago (apparently). This is either a) Founders saw writing on the wall and decided to get paid early rather than have to compete with a company with much deeper pockets and a preexisting fanbase. b) Facebook saw that Sony's announcement validated the space and decided to buy the company with most mindshare at the moment a…

IMO it's not just the deeper pocket and preexisting fanbase, it's Sony's great relationship with the gaming industry (not to mention its high quality first party studios) that is almost impossible for Oculus to compete with. The founder then probably realized that gaming is no longer the main path Oculus should focus on. If the new strategy is to pursue a more broader application of VR then working with FB makes more sense than it looks.

As a gamer, though, I can hardly see any other application of VR having more potential to become mainstream than VR in gaming.

Re: Facebook’s $2B Oculus deal happened over the last five days

#39

Post by MichaelGG »

mtgx wrote: post #5

That makes Palmer look even more like a greedy bastard, and that all he cared about was money all along. When he heard the $2 billion amount he was probably like: "So you want us to kill all of our gaming plans now, or should we wait a year to lay it easy on the fans?"

Where do people get off commenting about how someone should have turned down $2BN? Do you have an authoritative source that shows he had solid offers for hundreds of millions? Otherwise where do you decide that he's being a "greedy bastard"?

Even this article says they got "freedom to operate independently" - who knows, maybe it's true.

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