Facebook Buys Oculus Rift For $2 Billion

By DrunknMunky
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Grand Master

DrunknMunky Veteran

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Facebook has just announced that it's buying Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Seriously.

 

"Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says. "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate."

 

Oculus are equally chuffed. "We are excited to work with Mark and the Facebook team to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world," Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR says in a PR release. "We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it's only just the beginning."

 

The deal is made up of around $400 million in cash payouts, with the rest being made up of Facebook shares. It's not a done deal yet; it's expected to be finalised in Q2 2014

 

http://kotaku.com/facebook-buys-oculus-rift-for-2-billion-1551487939?

 

 

Palmer Luckey on Reddit:

 

I?ve always loved games. They?re windows into worlds that let us travel somewhere fantastic. My foray into virtual reality was driven by a desire to enhance my gaming experience; to make my rig more than just a window to these worlds, to actually let me step inside them. As time went on, I realized that VR technology wasn?t just possible, it was almost ready to move into the mainstream. All it needed was the right push.

 

We started Oculus VR with the vision of making virtual reality affordable and accessible, to allow everyone to experience the impossible. With the help of an incredible community, we?ve received orders for over 75,000 development kits from game developers, content creators, and artists around the world. When Facebook first approached us about partnering, I was skeptical. As I learned more about the company and its vision and spoke with Mark, the partnership not only made sense, but became the clear and obvious path to delivering virtual reality to everyone. Facebook was founded with the vision of making the world a more connected place. Virtual reality is a medium that allows us to share experiences with others in ways that were never before possible.

 

Facebook is run in an open way that?s aligned with Oculus? culture. Over the last decade, Mark and Facebook have been champions of open software and hardware, pushing the envelope of innovation for the entire tech industry. As Facebook has grown, they?ve continued to invest in efforts like with the Open Compute Project, their initiative that aims to drive innovation and reduce the cost of computing infrastructure across the industry. This is a team that?s used to making bold bets on the future.

 

In the end, I kept coming back to a question we always ask ourselves every day at Oculus: what?s best for the future of virtual reality? Partnering with Mark and the Facebook team is a unique and powerful opportunity. The partnership accelerates our vision, allows us to execute on some of our most creative ideas and take risks that were otherwise impossible. Most importantly, it means a better Oculus Rift with fewer compromises even faster than we anticipated.

 

Very little changes day-to-day at Oculus, although we?ll have substantially more resources to build the right team. If you want to come work on these hard problems in computer vision, graphics, input, and audio, please apply!

 

This is a special moment for the gaming industry ? Oculus? somewhat unpredictable future just became crystal clear: virtual reality is coming, and it?s going to change the way we play games forever.

 

I?m obsessed with VR. I spend every day pushing further, and every night dreaming of where we are going. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined we?d come so far so fast.

 

I?m proud to be a member of this community ? thank you all for carrying virtual reality and gaming forward and trusting in us to deliver. We won?t let you down. 

http://redd.it/21cy9n

 

 

Interest in OR instantly killed for me.

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Athernar

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This acquisition makes absolutely zero sense to me.

 

Oh well, maybe this might tempt Carmack to leave Oculus for Valve. Having Mike Abrash and Carmack under the same roof again would be legendary.

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Grand Master

D. S. Veteran

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2 billion? I don't know Facebook's CFO is on but I want some of that PRONTO!

 

I wonder if they're buying it just to bury it or to get advantageous patents.

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Brendeth

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who knows maybe Facebook will pump money into them and provide with some support to achieve their goals......... or more likely we'll get a VR facebook with 1080p ads galore!

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Grand Master

Lord Method Man

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2 billion? I don't know Facebook's CFO is on but I want some of that PRONTO!

 

I wonder if they're buying it just to bury it or to get advantageous patents.

 

They'll kill it off in its current form and resurrect it as a Facebook gaming platform for Second Life-type crap.

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The_Observer

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They'll kill it off in its current form and resurrect it as a Facebook gaming platform for Second Life-type crap.

 

facebook buy second life in unrelated news! mmmm /s

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Xtreme2damax

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APRIL FOOLS!

 

No, it's not? Damn...

 

I gave up Facebook.  It was riddled with constant drama, redundant recycled garbage from everyone reposting that stupid ecard crap, hoaxes, app spam, invite spam. The fact Facebook promotes anti-socialism which is ironic for being a social network.  I had friends or at least I thought I did, would message people and never heard back and no one had interest socializing outside of Facebook and even socializing via Facebook was scarce. Rather that posting unique content they would have crap auto post to their wall. Got to the point where I disabled posts from certain friends appearing on my feed, blocked app invites and eventually left Facebook altogether. It was depressing as it's hard for me as it is to make friends, I don't have very many friends and had to deal with people removing me for no reason. People I originally thought highly of, thought I could relate to and vice versa, these people I trusted thinking they would never abandon me for no reason or over trivial bullcrap.

 

Anyways this news completely kills off what little interest I may have had for the Oculus Rift especially since it could be locked to Facebook specific apps, They created a social network and service but have no experience outside of that and if they start treading into unfamiliar territory then the outcome most likely isn't going to be good for Oculus or end users that own Oculus hardware or were planning on investing in the hardware. Facebook should not be allowed to set their grubby claws on anything that doesn't concern them because anything they touch will likely go to ######.

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Grand Master

+Audioboxer Subscriber²

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Yeah, not too chuffed about Facebook being involved in this. Probably require a FB account/your personal life to even startup now.

 

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Ouch. Sony, nab that up pronto.

 

Also,

 

rG6REgj.png

 

lol

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FiB3R

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God ######ing damn it! Can't believe they sold out :(

Well, let's hope my (and seemingly everybody else's) gut reaction is misplaced, and some good will come of this.

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PsYcHoKiLLa

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OMG!  The terror!  So John Carmack now works for Facebook.  FML.

 

That spells Doom. See what I did there?

 

 

Sorry, I'll never do it again.

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