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Facebook Unceremoniously Kills Off 'Oculus' Brand
- gpm 5y agoI can't think of a more ceremonious way to kill a brand to hold an event announcing that the entire company was pivoting to do what that small piece of it did before, and that to monumentalize that change you were renaming the company... It's... literally a ceremony... and not a small one.
- neartheplain 5y agoThe speech Zuckerberg gave onstage with pomp and ceremony said, "Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing." Contrary to this claim, the Oculus brand was killed offstage in another executive's Facebook post. I'd say that was unceremonious.
- ramesh31 5y agoTo be fair, nobody outside of a tiny niche of PC gaming enthusiasts has any idea what Oculus is (or was) as a brand, nor do they care. That it didn't even seem worthy of mentioning to him isn't really surprising.
- tmp_anon_22 5y agoAnd honestly the technology isn't good enough for those masses they are now catering to. There's a reason VR commercials are so fanciful - if they showed the actual experience almost nobody would buy it.
- baby 5y agoWhat, I guess you never tried VR
- goatlover 5y agoIt only took someone having me try their Quest for two minutes to decide I should buy one. And it's been great for the cost and portability.
- rowanG077 5y agoThis is false. Oculus has sold millions of headsets. I mean it's not at home console levels of popularity but it's definitely no longer part of the niche gaming space.
- zzzzzzzza 5y agoliterally just bought a quest 2 and I'm pretty blown away tried vr years like 5 years ago and didn't seem fully baked then but now i don't see why you would buy a console when you could get a vr headset for cheaper and it's far more novel. imagine the nintendo wii except 8 times better.
- crazy_horse 5y agoIt's very hit or miss. I have a Vive from 2016. I purchased the Q2 with the intent of doing dev work with it and I expected it to be a big improvement. I mean I read reviews like yours and I saw what it was capable of. Don't get me wrong, it's a big deal that it is now standalone (the Vive very much feels lke the matrix), but the visual fidelity hadn't incresed prceptibly in that time (as far as I can tell) and the headset itself is still too heavy. The higher sales are interesting but it's at like 6 million units worldwide? The most popular consoles were over a hundred million. We're not even into a console that everyone knows about but only that weird dude has like the Xbox yet. I can see a future where these googles are 3x the resolution, even cheaper, and as light as actual glasses, and that day we'll be at mass market, probably before it. But if you made me work in VR for any length of time at all as of now, I'll quit because the quality is not there yet. I'd rather play the latest games on cheap but incredible monitors anyway. Give it six weeks. You might still be entralled. I sold mine, I don't want to build anything for that guy.
- klodolph 5y agoFeels a lot like digital cameras from circa 2000. You had cameras like the Nikon D1, an expensive piece of kit which barely did what it needed to do. But it was getting better.
- 5y ago
- toast0 5y ago> if they showed the actual experience almost nobody would buy it. Some of the pieces are real. Everyone has their mouth open, because it's real hard to breathe with your nose with all that stuff on your face.
- jobigoud 5y ago> if they showed the actual experience almost nobody would buy it. You can't do this without putting them in VR in the first place.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoThis is so true. I've been pushing VR meetings as an alternative to travel for workshops in these Corona times. But people don't even grok it unless you strap a headset on them and give time to get familiar with it. Once you do that you always hear "wow this is powerful, I forgot I was here" For us VR enthusiasts this is a given. For others it's a gimmick until they experience it. Like Morpheus said "No-one can tell you what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself". Only through this experience as a VR advocate I have I seen the truth in that. This is why I'm happy Facebook is so all-in on VR. They're doing this really hard work for us.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago> Once you do that you always hear "wow this is powerful, I forgot I was here" I don't find VR immersive at all. When I hear people say this, I tend to think they're a moron. The software, game design principles, and hardware has a long long way to go.
- 542354234235 5y ago>When I hear people say this, I tend to think they're a moron. In other words, you are small minded and assume that your personal experience is universal, so anyone that experiences things differently must just have moronic levels of intelligence.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoand here you are assuming something negative about me, wow. Human experience is really special. In my opinion, mainstream standards on pretty much any topic are exceptionally low. Mainstream news, tv, video games, movies, books, food, politics, farts, and all, are pretty poor. Not an especially novel opinion. So yeah, when someone says "i forgot where i was" after playing SUPERHOT or beat saber on an oculus for fifteen minutes... I'm gonna roll my eyes on the same level as finding bell peppers spicy or cop shows surprising.
- 542354234235 5y ago>if they showed the actual experience almost nobody would buy it. Next you're going to tell me that buying a Dodge Challenger won't get me a beautiful girlfriend and that HungryMan Dinners don't look like culinary masterpieces.
- erie 5y agoBut it was only last August that they announced Horizon Workrooms (beta) the VR space for teams to connect, collaborate and develop ideas, together https://www.oculus.com/workrooms/ https://www.oculus.com/workrooms/
- Aeolun 5y agoMy mom knows what Oculus is. If that doesn’t mean anything I don’t know what is. To be fair, she probably wouldn’t care about a name change as long as they keep making her Beat Saber machine.
- reissbaker 5y agoIf your mom plays Beat Saber on an Oculus device, I think knowing the Oculus brand is kind of unsurprising. Most people have never played Beat Saber or even tried a VR device; Oculus, in those circles, is a pretty niche brand.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoBeat saber was featured on Jimmy Fallon even, so definitely it has a good grounding in American (and maybe Korean) pop culture.
- dlivingston 5y ago> Jimmy Fallon > Korean pop culture I’m not seeing the connection. Can you explain?
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoAh sorry. It was more of an aside. Fallon caters to an American audience, I threw in Korea also just based on the amount of YouTube videos in Korean covering it.
- Aeolun 5y ago> If your mom plays Beat Saber on an Oculus device, I think knowing the Oculus brand is kind of unsurprising. Indeed. It’s rather more surprising that my mom is playing a VR game and purchased equipment for it in the first place. For that to happen she must’ve been aware of the Oculus brand.
- reissbaker 5y ago
- neartheplain 5y agoOculus has sold around 4 million Quest headsets, which don't require a gaming PC and cost less than current-gen gaming consoles.
- bduerst 5y agoYeah the unceremonious part here is the lack of announcement or even mention at the big ceremony.
- kerng 5y agoZuck said nothing changes brand wise - but Oculus name is dead and he did actually hide that fact. But in the grand scheme of things Oculus is pretty unknown, so that was probably part of the consideration to let it go quietly.
- johannes1234321 5y agomy interpretation is that they try to build a new brand and disassociate what had been Oculus from Facebook. At least in my bubblr ime thkng that keeps people from even trying Oculus stuff is the association with Facebook. By giving the company and the products a new name they can try to restart.
- charsi 5y agoThis still exists - https://about.facebook.com/technologies/oculus/ https://about.facebook.com/technologies/oculus/
- neartheplain 5y agoI don't understand this move. As much as Facebook has tarnished the Oculus brand, it still had positive attachment among longtime VR users and enthusiasts. For me the 'Meta' brand is linked more strongly with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, in an overwhelmingly negative sense, than with Oculus or VR.
- hbosch 5y ago>longtime VR users and enthusiasts This segment of users is probably not what "Meta" is concerned with.
- Aeolun 5y agoThat would be very in character for the company formerly known as Facebook.
- FranksTV 5y agoCrossing the chasm, at some level, means abandoning the early adopters. By the time the product achieves mainstream success they will have moved on to the next thing anyway.
- omgitsabird 5y agoI agree. Mainly, I think this is a push from a company who's idea pool has desiccated. What is the end goal to have people in a headset talking to each other? That will happen irregardless of whatever platform it exists on, and unless FB is giving away unlocked headsets perpetually, I don't think people will pick their "Metaverse" over any other. They might have an edge if they started as a peripherals company.
- KaiserPro 5y agoyou say this, but people choose Android over Apple, despite the terrible security and privacy problems the entire android eco system has. Say what you like about metabook, but at least its currently optional on your phone/device. Google and the myriad of shitness that is the android OEM manufacturer security is hard to escape. Sure, you can use custom roms, but you can do this with oculus as well.
- azth 5y agoIs Carmack still working on Oculus?
- s5300 5y agoHe was as of a month ago, and it doesn't appear that anything has changed since. I have lost a lot of respect for Carmack with how nonchalant he's been towards working with somebody as dubious as Zuckerberg
- sydthrowaway 5y agoYou would too, for a salary in the 8 figures.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y agoI don't think Carmack would run into any problems finding other 8 figures jobs, and he has been rich for a long time now anyway. Also what is it with this idea of "everyone will throw morals into the trash to work at X", it's simply not true, some people DO indeed posess ideals and the integrity to go with them.
- chrisco255 5y agoSomeone like Carmack could make 8 figures doing their own thing.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoTrue. He was probably making 8 figures under ZeniMax
- bitwize 5y agoActually, he sued ZeniMax over them not paying him the eight-figure sum he sold his stake in his company for.
- kobalsky 5y ago
- nseggs 5y ago“Meta Unceremoniously Kills Off Oculus Brand” - Meta: The New Meta. Facebook pretending to be self-aware is the new meta. No that’s old-meta. What’s the take? Hmm. Pick a New Name: The Easiest Meta. Introduce Meta to the popular discourse. Let the masses use it freely. Embrace the freedom of missed interpretation. It’s not Fake, it’s Meta. It’s not Facebook, it’s Meta. You wouldn’t understand, it’s too meta. How cool would it be if we just called it Meta? Metacognition. Meta-engineering. Meta-reality: it’s the business we’re already in! Have you seen the new Meta branding? It’s like the universe, but meta, and now we own it. It was so simple! The new meta, endlessly cyclical, and quite a long way from advice dog. Rush B. Trust Me.
- trhway 5y agoBack at Sun it was Java. I wonder whether it is a great vision that will propel FB even further up, or a start of a renaming orgy and detached from reality megaprojects in a company overtaken by mid-management types and marking transitioning of FB from an ever expanding superstar into a large undead incumbent.
- nseggs 5y agoI’m imagining it somewhere deep in the unceremonious middle. It’s unfortunate. Are they too big to die? I’m not super-rooting for that, but where is the reality check of the 90s? Where’s the actual disruption? The actual non-Facebook metaverse is a concept I don’t see them nearing. Huge tech != meaningful longevity. Are these companies surviving on market growth alone? Not actual market growth, but literally just access across the planet? Countries from the distant electronic past coming into digital yesterday? It’s free users for a system that is literally not innovating outside of FRL. Are they? What is the offering to humanity? On what merit dare they claim dibs on what they guess is the next plane of reality? Use Facebook messenger on Instagram? Now you don’t have to use Facebook? What a 2021 we’re having! I absolutely love the tech demos, but the ability to have a photorealistic avatar is not what is holding the metaverse back. Are we really just waiting around for a 1:1 representation of our physical identities? Think of the security you could have if we built the privacy in! Should I thank Facebook for having the money to fund the development that everybody else wants to have the money to do? Walkabout Minigolf is literally the most engaging and dynamic social experience I’ve had in VR. It’s low-poly minigolf. Did all the Facebook thinking stem from “how do we own the next App Store?” Because it really feels that way. Is that how we got the App Store?
- baby 5y agoThis is really weird!! Oculus has a great branding. My only theory is that they want to make it tighter to Meta so as not to get into any antitrust issues. But even then it doesn't make any sense to me...
- cptskippy 5y agoThe Facebook brand is tainted so they're renaming themselves Meta because people won't be trigger by "a Meta Company" in the site footer.
- SkyMarshal 5y agoFacebook is still going to be called Facebook, this is just renaming the parent company to more accurately reflect its portfolio - Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Occulus. Most Facebook users will never even know about this renaming.
- illvm 5y agoI think that's exactly what OP was trying to say: Instagram WhatsApp, etc. footers/splash screens will now read "a Meta company."
- fermentation 5y agoThis seems strange, I wonder what they'll call future headsets.
- glandium 5y agoMeta Goggles
- jazzyjackson 5y agothey are meta quests now
- metalliqaz 5y agoIs there any company that's even close to Oculus in the VR space? I know HTC's Vive and Valve's Index could compete with the Rift, but they didn't have the Oculus app ecosystem. Samsung's standalone died, same with Google. Is there anything equivalent to the Quest 2?
- RealityVoid 5y agoThe Index is great, but it will lose in the end because of 3 reasons: 1) much cheaper price 2) portability 3) seamless onboarding experience I love my index but there is no way that it can currently beat oculus because of these things. Also, Oculus is well aware of these features. At least Carmack is. The highlight of connect for me was the Carmack keynote. I suggest all techies watch it: https://youtu.be/BnSUk0je6oo https://youtu.be/BnSUk0je6oo
- warning26 5y agoGiven that Valve's next big product is a cheaper portable non-VR gaming system with a (planned) seamless onboarding experience, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was a test run for a future portable VR set to compete with the Quest. Valve, with their already existing VR ecosystem, is probably the best positioned to compete in the space.
- pronlover723 5y agoMeta has 30x? 100x?, 300x? the resources of Valve. I'm not routing for Meta but it seems unlikely Valve can out do Meta.
- SkyMarshal 5y agoValve has the best immersive PC gaming platform in the world (eg not things like Farmville, but games pushing the limits of immersive 3D tech). The only real competitors to Steam are consoles. Games have traditionally been the main driver of home PC hardware, so I wouldn't count Valve out easily.
- endofreach 5y agoI am so excited for the near future where facebook / meta will be irrelevant.
- d--b 5y agoAs much as I dislike facebook, dropping the Oculus brand is probably a good move for the bet they're making. Oculus is too associated with gaming. Facebook wants VR for telepresence, they don't want the gamers market, they want the facebook market. I think VR sucks and I hate it, but if Zuck convinces my mum to strap on a headset, there won't be much I can do about it. And he has powerful means to convince people...
- piggybox 5y agoI'm not sure if this reporting is correct. If you check meta.com and on the top menu "what we build" you can still see Oculus in the list.
- Shorel 5y agoI will always think that Carmack not working for Valve is a huge lost historical opportunity.