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This is a good move by Facebook. VR is going to be huge, huge huge. It might even be as big as Bitcoin. :) I think what Oculus did was massively de-risk their

This is a good move by Facebook. VR is going to be huge, huge huge. It might even be as big as Bitcoin. :) I think what Oculus did was massively de-risk their next ten years. In their business plans, there were undoubtedly very large gray circles with things like "gain overwhelming market share (how?)" and lists of competitors that included, well, everyone in tech. If you had to pick a tech company to leverage your disruptive new consumer technology, and make sure it kept the 'awesome', and was hacker friendly, who would you go to? In exchange, they probably lopped another 10-50x of potential value off the top of their company. Not that they won't see some of that realized in Facebook if this is succesful -- they will. But, they will be sharing the gain around in exchange for getting access to that giant global customer base and being able to tap the considerable resources available at FB.

Blahah 13y ago
> If you had to pick a tech company to leverage your disruptive new consumer technology, and make sure it kept the 'awesome', and was hacker friendly, who would you go to? google
- vessenes 13y ago
  Yep, those would be the two companies you'd have bidding. Except, Carmack is too heavy metal to go to Google. I only partly jest.
  - kposehn 13y ago
    Carmack is definitely too heavy metal for google :)
    - fernandotakai 13y ago
      tbh, of all companies, i would never say "carmack is going to facebook".
- vicbrooker 13y ago
  amazon?
- prawn 13y ago
  I expected Microsoft to grab them and I'm surprised they didn't. Would've made a smart fit with Xbox and given them easy ways to directly integrate it with their OSs. Would work well with gaming, education, eventually business, mobile and so on. $2b a few months ago would've been a small price to pay to get in early on this, unless they have something comparable up their sleeves from the research division.
  - presty 13y ago
    Well, Don Mattrick left last year and Marc Whitten's leaving/just left, so I don't really find it surprising.
- barbs 13y ago
  Valve
- aviraldg 13y ago
  Valve or Google definitely. Valve because of the gaming expertise, Google for the existing experience and culture of innovation.
  - Florin_Andrei 13y ago
    > Google for the existing experience and culture of innovation Perfect contrast with Facebook.
- relampago 13y ago
  Nintendo
audiophilip_ 13y ago
>If you had to pick a tech company to leverage your disruptive new consumer technology, and make sure it kept the 'awesome', and was hacker friendly, who would you go to? Valve.
- aryastark 13y ago
  Or Blizzard. They have an actual virtual world already. I can easily see WoW fans who already sit at a PC and buy special hardware for their games to flock to VR tech.
  - ericd 13y ago
    Yeah, there are so many companies that I'd have picked over FB if I were them. Blizzard and Valve would have been excellent choices, though.
- lotu 13y ago
  Does Valve have $2billion dollars lying around to acquire companies with?
  - fleetfox 13y ago
    Yes
    - masklinn 13y ago
      Don't think so. Valve's total equity was estimated at ~$2.5bn in 2012
      - zerooneinfinity 13y ago
        Just curious where you got the source for this -- no pun intended.
        masklinn 13y ago
_zen 13y ago
Spoken like an investor who knows nothing about the audience. Sorry, VR was intended for PC gamers. They're not casual mobile gamers. They loathe casual games. They now loathe VR for wedding with Facebook.
- runako 13y ago
  >> VR was intended for PC gamers I'm not familiar with the intimate details of the Ocululs business plan, but their story page says they have a larger view of the potential for VR: "revolutionize the way people experience interactive content" and their vision says nothing about games: "Immersive virtual reality technology that's wearable and affordable." Perhaps the negative comments here are part of the natural bitterness from insiders that accompanies any technology as it goes mainstream?
  - cheald 13y ago
    I think a lot of the problem is that VR as a means of improving the process of "experiencing interactive content" only really works when the content is presented from a first-person view and there is value in that perspective. Right now, that means FPS and FPRPG games. Amnesia through the Oculus Rift is a genuinely amazing (and terrifying) experience that is improved by the headset (it makes you, the player, feel like you can't step back and escape, which adds to the experience); shopping in a virtual shopping mall is just an impediment to getting what I want. Remember the VR-32 and VRML? Everyone was super excited that we were going to start doing all the things in virtual reality, and then we figured out that it's a really cumbersome way to present most information.
    - runako 13y ago
      >> Right now, that means FPS and FPRPG games. Sure, I understand that. My point is that perhaps folks who went to the trouble of dedicating their lives to VR might have a larger vision than this. In 1992, you could have defined the Internet in similarly limited terms -- after all, using the Internet largely meant text interfaces. I'm just positing that the folks who run Oculus are a) smart and b) have spent a lot of time thinking about how best to spread VR. If VR takes off, by definition it will mean expanding beyond FPS games, because most people do not play those (you could alternatively get VR to go mainstream by increasing market penetration of FPS and FPRPG games by orders of magnitude, which might be harder than putting VR to other uses).
wildermuthn 13y ago
I agree that it is a good move, but not because of takes away risk. It's because Facebook has a great deal of users, money, and apparently vision. I had no idea Zuck was this smart (although building Facebook into a giant ought to have been a good clue). Oculus isn't being conservative here. They're shooting for the moon.
10098 13y ago
When big companies buy small good products, they often turn to poop, because the new masters lack the original vision and the decisions about the product will be made by PMs trying to get a promotion, not by those who actually care. I suspect this will be the case with this acquisition. My opinion is based on the way I see facebook managing their products: whatever they're offering to ordinary users is mediocre and basically stays afloat only because of the network effect, and whatever they are offering to their paying customers is effectively a scam (youtube search for "facebook fraud"). I can't see them possibly making good use of Oculus.
T-R 13y ago
This is a terrible move for Oculus, though. The reaction from their core audiences - hardcore gamers and developers - seems to be largely negative, at a time right after Sony - a company that caters to that audience - announced its competing "Project Morpheus". It's not being taken as a signal of Facebook's innovation, but as Oculus moving toward a casual audience, and their fan base feels abandoned. Do they really feel that whatever plans they have with Facebook are so low-risk and high return that they no longer need that audience?
- baby 13y ago
  They have a new audience now: the world.
  - LoganCale 13y ago
    The world's reaction is also negative. They don't want to wear a box strapped to their face to interact with their friends. Seriously, look at the reaction on Twitter by non-gamers and Facebook users. It's being met with incredulity and mockery.
    - nnq 13y ago
      They don't want now, but wait 'till Facebook does "their magic" on them :) That "networking effect" stuff is not buzz-speak, and they know how to wield it. Plus, gaming and socialization go hand in hand - it's amazing that others just don't fucking get this yet and see "gamers communities" as just niches or islands.
  - T-R 13y ago
    Their new audience isn't quite as easily convinced to invest hundreds of dollars on a piece of dedicated hardware.
  - WalterSear 13y ago
    They already had that audience - down the line, once they have established their beachhead. Selling themselves to facebook doesn't bring it any closer.
ivanca 13y ago
False false false; this is the dead of Oculus for one simple reason: Developers, doesn't matter how much ridiculous amounts of money you have if you scare away developers making it part of one of the spammiest and most hatred companies in the world it will fail.
- baby 13y ago
  Facebook is not the most hatred company in the world, especially after Instagram, Whatsapp and Oculus' acquisitions.
- qq66 13y ago
  > most hatred [sic] companies in the world Look at #81. http://www.apcoinsight.com/methodologies/tools/el-top-100-companies.aspx#.UzKNuYXmfPs http://www.apcoinsight.com/methodologies/tools/el-top-100-co...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- jo_ 13y ago
  Part of the reason I asked if I could cancel my preorder of Dev Kit 2 was some bad experience with Facebook dicking devs early on. Unless they've changed their tune in recent years, I don't understand how this could bode well for their support audience.
tomelders 13y ago
My bold prediction: Facebook will be broke in five years, gone in ten. Anyone getting into bed with them now is putting the noose around their own neck. Facebook is a prototype of what "social networking" should be. Anyone who took five minutes out of their day could think up ten ways "social networking" could be better, and probably all of them would be incompatible with facebook's business model.
- yourad_io 13y ago
  IANABP (..Business Person) but their 2 big acquisitions have increased their share of the social/data/identity pie considerably. Yes, these can be very ephemeral and the market can change on you (as MySpace will gladly tell you), but having 1.1B+ monthly actives on your core platform alone (plus however much instagram+whatsapp do) gives you a lot of room to try and recover when things start shrinking. The oculus VR acquisition feels special, in that they aren't just buying users/reach, but something more substantial and forward looking. If they're smart, they'll let the oculus team work on the track they've been on, and let Facebook teams develop the "non-gaming VR experiences" they want to push. Hard to think how much the landscape would need to shift for FB to be broke in 5 years. If Oculus delivers on their VR dreams, that alone could potentially bring an almost-bankrupt FB back from the brink.
  - tomelders 13y ago
    I find it's very easy to imagine how the landscape could change for FB to be broke in five years; Anyone can build a better way to "social network", and anyone will. Guaranteed. The only real question is... what happens if Facebook can't buy them? I admire what Facebook has achieved, but it's clear to me that they don't understand what their actual role is, or what people "want" from Facebook as a company if it is to survive. There is an air of mild desperations to the whole enterprise that hints at the acknowledgement of an imminent demise. This acquisition reeks of that desperation.
WalterSear 13y ago
I would have said Oculus, before today.

Blahah 13y ago

> If you had to pick a tech company to leverage your disruptive new consumer technology, and make sure it kept the 'awesome', and was hacker friendly, who would you go to? google

vessenes 13y ago
Yep, those would be the two companies you'd have bidding. Except, Carmack is too heavy metal to go to Google. I only partly jest.
- kposehn 13y ago
  Carmack is definitely too heavy metal for google :)
  - fernandotakai 13y ago
    tbh, of all companies, i would never say "carmack is going to facebook".
vicbrooker 13y ago
amazon?
prawn 13y ago
I expected Microsoft to grab them and I'm surprised they didn't. Would've made a smart fit with Xbox and given them easy ways to directly integrate it with their OSs. Would work well with gaming, education, eventually business, mobile and so on. $2b a few months ago would've been a small price to pay to get in early on this, unless they have something comparable up their sleeves from the research division.
- presty 13y ago
  Well, Don Mattrick left last year and Marc Whitten's leaving/just left, so I don't really find it surprising.
barbs 13y ago
Valve
aviraldg 13y ago
Valve or Google definitely. Valve because of the gaming expertise, Google for the existing experience and culture of innovation.
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  > Google for the existing experience and culture of innovation Perfect contrast with Facebook.
relampago 13y ago
Nintendo

audiophilip_ 13y ago

>If you had to pick a tech company to leverage your disruptive new consumer technology, and make sure it kept the 'awesome', and was hacker friendly, who would you go to? Valve.

aryastark 13y ago
Or Blizzard. They have an actual virtual world already. I can easily see WoW fans who already sit at a PC and buy special hardware for their games to flock to VR tech.
- ericd 13y ago
  Yeah, there are so many companies that I'd have picked over FB if I were them. Blizzard and Valve would have been excellent choices, though.
lotu 13y ago
Does Valve have $2billion dollars lying around to acquire companies with?
- fleetfox 13y ago
  Yes
  - masklinn 13y ago
    Don't think so. Valve's total equity was estimated at ~$2.5bn in 2012
    - zerooneinfinity 13y ago
      Just curious where you got the source for this -- no pun intended.
      - masklinn 13y ago

_zen 13y ago

Spoken like an investor who knows nothing about the audience. Sorry, VR was intended for PC gamers. They're not casual mobile gamers. They loathe casual games. They now loathe VR for wedding with Facebook.

runako 13y ago
>> VR was intended for PC gamers I'm not familiar with the intimate details of the Ocululs business plan, but their story page says they have a larger view of the potential for VR: "revolutionize the way people experience interactive content" and their vision says nothing about games: "Immersive virtual reality technology that's wearable and affordable." Perhaps the negative comments here are part of the natural bitterness from insiders that accompanies any technology as it goes mainstream?
- cheald 13y ago
  I think a lot of the problem is that VR as a means of improving the process of "experiencing interactive content" only really works when the content is presented from a first-person view and there is value in that perspective. Right now, that means FPS and FPRPG games. Amnesia through the Oculus Rift is a genuinely amazing (and terrifying) experience that is improved by the headset (it makes you, the player, feel like you can't step back and escape, which adds to the experience); shopping in a virtual shopping mall is just an impediment to getting what I want. Remember the VR-32 and VRML? Everyone was super excited that we were going to start doing all the things in virtual reality, and then we figured out that it's a really cumbersome way to present most information.
  - runako 13y ago
    >> Right now, that means FPS and FPRPG games. Sure, I understand that. My point is that perhaps folks who went to the trouble of dedicating their lives to VR might have a larger vision than this. In 1992, you could have defined the Internet in similarly limited terms -- after all, using the Internet largely meant text interfaces. I'm just positing that the folks who run Oculus are a) smart and b) have spent a lot of time thinking about how best to spread VR. If VR takes off, by definition it will mean expanding beyond FPS games, because most people do not play those (you could alternatively get VR to go mainstream by increasing market penetration of FPS and FPRPG games by orders of magnitude, which might be harder than putting VR to other uses).

wildermuthn 13y ago

I agree that it is a good move, but not because of takes away risk. It's because Facebook has a great deal of users, money, and apparently vision. I had no idea Zuck was this smart (although building Facebook into a giant ought to have been a good clue). Oculus isn't being conservative here. They're shooting for the moon.

10098 13y ago

When big companies buy small good products, they often turn to poop, because the new masters lack the original vision and the decisions about the product will be made by PMs trying to get a promotion, not by those who actually care. I suspect this will be the case with this acquisition. My opinion is based on the way I see facebook managing their products: whatever they're offering to ordinary users is mediocre and basically stays afloat only because of the network effect, and whatever they are offering to their paying customers is effectively a scam (youtube search for "facebook fraud"). I can't see them possibly making good use of Oculus.

T-R 13y ago

This is a terrible move for Oculus, though. The reaction from their core audiences - hardcore gamers and developers - seems to be largely negative, at a time right after Sony - a company that caters to that audience - announced its competing "Project Morpheus". It's not being taken as a signal of Facebook's innovation, but as Oculus moving toward a casual audience, and their fan base feels abandoned. Do they really feel that whatever plans they have with Facebook are so low-risk and high return that they no longer need that audience?

baby 13y ago
They have a new audience now: the world.
- LoganCale 13y ago
  The world's reaction is also negative. They don't want to wear a box strapped to their face to interact with their friends. Seriously, look at the reaction on Twitter by non-gamers and Facebook users. It's being met with incredulity and mockery.
  - nnq 13y ago
    They don't want now, but wait 'till Facebook does "their magic" on them :) That "networking effect" stuff is not buzz-speak, and they know how to wield it. Plus, gaming and socialization go hand in hand - it's amazing that others just don't fucking get this yet and see "gamers communities" as just niches or islands.
- T-R 13y ago
  Their new audience isn't quite as easily convinced to invest hundreds of dollars on a piece of dedicated hardware.
- WalterSear 13y ago
  They already had that audience - down the line, once they have established their beachhead. Selling themselves to facebook doesn't bring it any closer.

ivanca 13y ago

False false false; this is the dead of Oculus for one simple reason: Developers, doesn't matter how much ridiculous amounts of money you have if you scare away developers making it part of one of the spammiest and most hatred companies in the world it will fail.

baby 13y ago
Facebook is not the most hatred company in the world, especially after Instagram, Whatsapp and Oculus' acquisitions.
qq66 13y ago
> most hatred [sic] companies in the world Look at #81. http://www.apcoinsight.com/methodologies/tools/el-top-100-companies.aspx#.UzKNuYXmfPs http://www.apcoinsight.com/methodologies/tools/el-top-100-co...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jo_ 13y ago
Part of the reason I asked if I could cancel my preorder of Dev Kit 2 was some bad experience with Facebook dicking devs early on. Unless they've changed their tune in recent years, I don't understand how this could bode well for their support audience.

tomelders 13y ago

My bold prediction: Facebook will be broke in five years, gone in ten. Anyone getting into bed with them now is putting the noose around their own neck. Facebook is a prototype of what "social networking" should be. Anyone who took five minutes out of their day could think up ten ways "social networking" could be better, and probably all of them would be incompatible with facebook's business model.

yourad_io 13y ago
IANABP (..Business Person) but their 2 big acquisitions have increased their share of the social/data/identity pie considerably. Yes, these can be very ephemeral and the market can change on you (as MySpace will gladly tell you), but having 1.1B+ monthly actives on your core platform alone (plus however much instagram+whatsapp do) gives you a lot of room to try and recover when things start shrinking. The oculus VR acquisition feels special, in that they aren't just buying users/reach, but something more substantial and forward looking. If they're smart, they'll let the oculus team work on the track they've been on, and let Facebook teams develop the "non-gaming VR experiences" they want to push. Hard to think how much the landscape would need to shift for FB to be broke in 5 years. If Oculus delivers on their VR dreams, that alone could potentially bring an almost-bankrupt FB back from the brink.
- tomelders 13y ago
  I find it's very easy to imagine how the landscape could change for FB to be broke in five years; Anyone can build a better way to "social network", and anyone will. Guaranteed. The only real question is... what happens if Facebook can't buy them? I admire what Facebook has achieved, but it's clear to me that they don't understand what their actual role is, or what people "want" from Facebook as a company if it is to survive. There is an air of mild desperations to the whole enterprise that hints at the acknowledgement of an imminent demise. This acquisition reeks of that desperation.

WalterSear 13y ago

I would have said Oculus, before today.