I can't agree more that developing and delivering competitive VR will be resource intensive over many years, but Oculus had already raised on the order of $100

I can't agree more that developing and delivering competitive VR will be resource intensive over many years, but Oculus had already raised on the order of $100 million, and i'm certain they could have either raised capital for manufacturing or negotiated directly with an existing contract manufacturer for production (many of whom must surely have been beating a path to their door). Is a large tech company really that much better of a bank/VC than a bank or VC? ("don't answer that question") You mention that Facebook brings "scaling infrastructure experience to the table". While FB's datacenter and network expertise might be very helpful for rolling out any hosted or networked VR applications, I would argue that shipping a hardware product requires a radically different culture compared to shipping web applications. Oculus will be, at best, be Facebook's first big risky learning experience in meeting contemporary expectations for consumer electronics logistics. Even Apple is still learning how to do this, and they have the benefit of shipping dozens of products with similar scale and expectations. I think if Oculus had done things on their own, or with a less brand name partner (Flextronics?) customers would have been willing to cut them much more slack regarding schedule and minor roll out woes as long as the core technology/experience delivered. Another major downside from such tight ties to Facebook will be convincing other large institutions/platforms (Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo, Google/Android, Apple, hardware vendors) to cooperate or collaborate in building new services. Oculus might be promised autonomy, but would Palmer still be allowed to unilaterally negotiate with Linden Labs, or IBM, or Apple? Seems unlikely. EDIT TO ADD: The whole acquisition would make a lot more sense if Oculus had suddenly come under direct legal/patent/IP pressure, which could burn through that $100M a lot faster than, eg, the most significant advances in VR in a generation.