I have been following the Rift closely with strong expectations of buying the consumer release. My initial reaction to this news was negative due to my dislike of Facebook. However, after reading Palmer Lucky's latest posts on reddit, I believe this may turn out to be very positive instead. If nothing else, I will try to keep an open mind and trust that the Oculus folks made the deal for more then their wallets.
The bigger question is what does it mean for Kickstarter? You "invest" in a project and then in the end they might sell the tech to Facebook (or whoever) for big bucks. That might put a damper on future kickstarter tech projects.
According to an insider who wasn't supposed to speak publicly. Facebook is going to redesign the hardware and add a Facebook interface. As said before, RIP. Valve and Sony, please save the future of VR
I think the reaction to this is pretty typical 2014 internet "race to be the most offended". The Oculus company vision and overall goal was to bring VR to the masses, and I'm excited as hell to see what their product evolves in to when they're able to manufacture at the scale where it makes it possible to not use re-purposed cellular technology. Remember, the reason the screen in the O.G. Oculus was so shitty was because they were limited to those specific screen sizes because to scale properly they had to work with existing screens used in larger-screen phones in the market. Those kind of limitations with the might of Facebook behind them are a thing of the past. It seems incredibly glass-half-full to make all of these sweeping assumptions that you're not going to be able to even turn the Oculus on without logging in to your Facebook account and all the other stupid shit people have been saying. Cliffsnotes: Follow Carmack on Twitter. In all my contact with him, he's only ever been 100% open and honest, often to the point of it being a little weird as he flippantly disregards company PR lines to give his own opinion. Carmack is excited for this, which means you probably should be too. I've learned that he's a lot like Graeme Devine and other industry veterans. When they say something is cool, they've got the experience to back it up, and you should listen to them.
Ok, but why Facebook? Why do they want this? Everything they do is Facebook related, so it's not a stretch to guess that they are going to tie the Occulus to Facebook. I guess we will find out, but in the mean time Sony's effort gets a boost.
Facebook isn't growing like they used to be, particularly among younger demographics. Teenagers now don't have Facebook accounts, because they just get you in trouble. Snapchat and similar services that are way more private and way less public are taking off instead. When you're a publicly traded company, year over year growth is expected. Look at it this way: Way back when, Google was a search engine. Google realized in order to not be the next [insert defunct search engine here, AltaVista, HotBot, whatever] they had to evolve in to a technology company. Google's bread and butter is still search, but they've diversified so much that if search traffic starts to dry up it doesn't even matter because they've got their hands in so many other cookie jars between both web apps and real world products (Android, Glass, Nest, etc.). What we're seeing is Facebook doing a similar shift from being a one trick pony social networking company to evolving into a technology company. It's incredibly naive and short sighted to think the sole motivation for Facebook buying Oculus is to exclusively make Facebook a VR experience and ditch all the things that made Oculus so cool to begin with. You don't drop $2b on a company one day and then the next day walk in and be like "Alright we're doing everything different."
I agree two companies really died with the announcement, Oculus and Kickstarter the damage to both is probably fatal.
I dont want to be cynical about this but you can bet Facebook will move the focus away from gaming and onto other things.
The Instagram purchase made sense and I hope they with improve the hell out of it because the entire service is a joke. I just hope the oculus rift purchase has nothing to deal with data mining.
Oh, so this is where the cool people hang out? I should drop by the Lounge section more often "Invest" and Kickstarter don't belong in the same sentence. It's not an investment. You're not investing in a company. You're donating and getting some nice reward in return. Sometimes, that reward is the actual product (which essentially makes that donation a pre-order), sometimes it's more or less. Kickstarter is built on trust and ideas; that you believe in the potential of the campaign's idea and want to help make it a reality. The Kickstarter was for the development and production of the original dev kit. Everything that has happened since, has absolutely nothing to do with Kickstarter. Without that support, without that initial push, Oculus and VR tech in general wouldn't be where it is today, and we wouldn't be discussing this. Look at this way: This acquisition just cemented Kickstarter's validity, if it wasn't valid already. A Kickstarted project grew in potential and promise to the point that it was bought for 2 billion by Facebook. And why would Oculus be damaged by this in any way? Gaming is only a small part in what VR is capable of and its potential to revolutionize certain fields in the future. Without the power and funds and support of a major company like Facebook, Oculus wouldn't have the means to meet those demands if they truly wanted to make the Rift available for more than just a niche group. With this, they now have all the resources they need to be able to build, test, ship, expand, hire, research without worrying about financial or manufacturing roadbumps.
I'd agree you're only backing an idea, there's no investment. However I do think if I'd made incredibly good money due to that support, while under no obligation, I'd like to think I would 'donate' something back to initial supporters.
