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I think Oculus's attitude is actually fairly sensible for the position they are in.. First, the success of VR is an existential risk for Oculus. This is not tr

by sjburt 10y ago

I think Oculus's attitude is actually fairly sensible for the position they are in.. First, the success of VR is an existential risk for Oculus. This is not true for Valve; Valve just doesn't want to be left behind (at least at a business level, I have no doubt their engineering organization wants to continue to be the tech leader). Second, they are very concerned about whether people have good VR experiences, because the well has been poisoned by people's memories of 90s VR, Cardboard, concerns about motion sickness, overhype, headsets looking dumb, etc. Third, they're a fairly small organization, and they already have to support engagements with GPU vendors, OS, as well, as getting their hardware built and supported. Having to support other hardware on their platform (especially as there is a race to the bottom between HTC, Razer, etc) is a huge additional burden. They do have financial resources from Facebook, but you can't just throw money at an engineering org, you have to scale carefully. So to make VR is successful, they have to make sure that people have good experiences, but they have a small team. Buying exclusives makes perfect sense for them: it's a way to leverage Facebook's financial resources, and since the titles are exclusive they can focus on making those titles work as well as possible on a SW/HW stack that they own.

SXX 10y ago
By now Oculus VR is clearly larger organization than Valve and likely only small portion of Valve works on anything VR-related. So I just not sure you can call them "small" anymore.
- usrusr 10y ago
  How much of the Vive is Valve and how much is HTC? Valve was very lucky to find a hardware partner content with not trying to establish their own content delivery platform.
  - mpeg 10y ago
    Can hardly call it luck when Valve runs the largest PC game content delivery platform in the world. They can definitely set the terms of that kind of partnership.
cm3 10y ago
No, they don't have to make them Oculus exclusive to support VR devs and fund the development of more titles. VR headsets on the PC are just another device like your keyboard, mouse and monitor. I haven't heard of an LG-monitor-exclusive game before, so why should it exist for VR? It's different on consoles. Firs there was DRM and now the insistence on exclusivity. For some reason Oculus seems to have forgotten their promise of an open ecosystem, and I hope it's not some Facebook influence Palmer is unable to fight against, and if that's case, I hope Carmack isn't getting pissed. Remember, John is the driving force behind GPL'ing all the engines/games at id software. It's reasonable to doubt any future GPL id software release since John left. Between the Vive providing an arguably better experience (at a hefty price) and Oculus alienating PC gamers left and right, I have no idea what's going on in their management department. It looks like the wrong people got control.
- TwoBit 10y ago
  TVs are all nearly the same. Currently VR headsets are not. If you disagree then I suggest you head on over to the reddit Oculus or Vive forums.
  - seanwilson 10y ago
    > TVs are all nearly the same. Currently VR headsets are not. If you disagree then I suggest you head on over to the reddit Oculus or Vive forums. Don't they have both have very similar specs and hardware (ignoring input for now)? Also, the whole point of drivers/SDKs is to abstract hardware differences away so software can work on a variety of hardware. It doesn't strike me that they are so different the drivers/SDKs can't cope with the differences. Given Revive lets Vive users play Oculus locked down games and both the Oculus and Vive are supported on Steam it's clear their hardware differences isn't a huge deal.
  - cm3 10y ago
    Same with GPUs where the driver is what abstracts away most differences. I'm not sure what the argument is.
- zamalek 10y ago
JetSpiegel 10y ago
> Third, they're a fairly small organization Yeah, I'm playing the world's smallest violin for Facebook, of all companies. THEY ARE TOO SMALL!
- flamethroeaway 10y ago
  Give them a break they only have a 300billion market cap.
agildehaus 10y ago
Oculus is backed by Facebook. You cannot in any way frame them to be small, or at any existential risk.
- cma 10y ago
  And even ignoring Facebook I think Oculus actually has more employees than Valve at this point. Zuckerberg mentions the number in this stream, I think it was around 700 or so employees, but can't remember for sure: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/137176-watch-mark-zuckerberg-unbox-retail-oculus-rift-via-facebook-livestream http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/137176-watch-mark-zuckerberg...
  - pyronite 10y ago
    In the video Mark Zuckerberg says "we have about 400 people working on this now" at 0:50 in.
    - cma 10y ago
      Thanks for finding that. Wikipedia says Valve had 330 as of 2013, so Valve most likely slightly outnumbers them. Hardly David vs. Goliath in headcount/organization size though. Though of course you have to be aware HTC is the production scale out.
      - jn1234 10y ago
        It's laughable how outclassed Oculus is by Valve. If Valve were to release Half-Life 3 as an exclusive on Vive, Oculus as a gaming headset would be toast. Valve has some of the most valuable franchises (Dota 2, Team Fortress, Portal etc) around and are under-utilizing them, not to mention they operate the largest PC gaming distribution platform.
        tehrei 10y ago
        They are, in a way, the most benevolent of dictators.
sambe 10y ago
It's sad but predictable to see your comment downvoted for offering an interesting perspective. Especially considering most responses are sarcastic "yeah Facebook is small", ignoring your explanation. I'd have thought most here acknowledge your point that you can't arbitrarily add people/cash to a team. In general I don't like exclusivity, but I don't downvote for a well-intended, thoughtful contribution. I do think you ignore the more obvious motivation of them wanting a larger cut of the price.

by sjburt 10y ago

SXX 10y ago

By now Oculus VR is clearly larger organization than Valve and likely only small portion of Valve works on anything VR-related. So I just not sure you can call them "small" anymore.

usrusr 10y ago
How much of the Vive is Valve and how much is HTC? Valve was very lucky to find a hardware partner content with not trying to establish their own content delivery platform.
- mpeg 10y ago
  Can hardly call it luck when Valve runs the largest PC game content delivery platform in the world. They can definitely set the terms of that kind of partnership.

cm3 10y ago

No, they don't have to make them Oculus exclusive to support VR devs and fund the development of more titles. VR headsets on the PC are just another device like your keyboard, mouse and monitor. I haven't heard of an LG-monitor-exclusive game before, so why should it exist for VR? It's different on consoles. Firs there was DRM and now the insistence on exclusivity. For some reason Oculus seems to have forgotten their promise of an open ecosystem, and I hope it's not some Facebook influence Palmer is unable to fight against, and if that's case, I hope Carmack isn't getting pissed. Remember, John is the driving force behind GPL'ing all the engines/games at id software. It's reasonable to doubt any future GPL id software release since John left. Between the Vive providing an arguably better experience (at a hefty price) and Oculus alienating PC gamers left and right, I have no idea what's going on in their management department. It looks like the wrong people got control.

TwoBit 10y ago
TVs are all nearly the same. Currently VR headsets are not. If you disagree then I suggest you head on over to the reddit Oculus or Vive forums.
- seanwilson 10y ago
  > TVs are all nearly the same. Currently VR headsets are not. If you disagree then I suggest you head on over to the reddit Oculus or Vive forums. Don't they have both have very similar specs and hardware (ignoring input for now)? Also, the whole point of drivers/SDKs is to abstract hardware differences away so software can work on a variety of hardware. It doesn't strike me that they are so different the drivers/SDKs can't cope with the differences. Given Revive lets Vive users play Oculus locked down games and both the Oculus and Vive are supported on Steam it's clear their hardware differences isn't a huge deal.
- cm3 10y ago
  Same with GPUs where the driver is what abstracts away most differences. I'm not sure what the argument is.
zamalek 10y ago

JetSpiegel 10y ago

> Third, they're a fairly small organization Yeah, I'm playing the world's smallest violin for Facebook, of all companies. THEY ARE TOO SMALL!

flamethroeaway 10y ago
Give them a break they only have a 300billion market cap.

agildehaus 10y ago

Oculus is backed by Facebook. You cannot in any way frame them to be small, or at any existential risk.

cma 10y ago
And even ignoring Facebook I think Oculus actually has more employees than Valve at this point. Zuckerberg mentions the number in this stream, I think it was around 700 or so employees, but can't remember for sure: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/137176-watch-mark-zuckerberg-unbox-retail-oculus-rift-via-facebook-livestream http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/137176-watch-mark-zuckerberg...
- pyronite 10y ago
  In the video Mark Zuckerberg says "we have about 400 people working on this now" at 0:50 in.
  - cma 10y ago
    Thanks for finding that. Wikipedia says Valve had 330 as of 2013, so Valve most likely slightly outnumbers them. Hardly David vs. Goliath in headcount/organization size though. Though of course you have to be aware HTC is the production scale out.
    - jn1234 10y ago
      It's laughable how outclassed Oculus is by Valve. If Valve were to release Half-Life 3 as an exclusive on Vive, Oculus as a gaming headset would be toast. Valve has some of the most valuable franchises (Dota 2, Team Fortress, Portal etc) around and are under-utilizing them, not to mention they operate the largest PC gaming distribution platform.
      - tehrei 10y ago
        They are, in a way, the most benevolent of dictators.

sambe 10y ago

It's sad but predictable to see your comment downvoted for offering an interesting perspective. Especially considering most responses are sarcastic "yeah Facebook is small", ignoring your explanation. I'd have thought most here acknowledge your point that you can't arbitrarily add people/cash to a team. In general I don't like exclusivity, but I don't downvote for a well-intended, thoughtful contribution. I do think you ignore the more obvious motivation of them wanting a larger cut of the price.