Skip to main content

Facebook buys Oculus Rift VR company for $2 billion

By
Mark Zuckerberg has described VR as the ‘next major computing platform after mobile’, as Notch pulls support for Minecraft.
Virtual reality has an unexpected new champion, as Facebook announces it has bought Oculus VR for $400 million cash and 23.1 million Facebook shares, plus another $300 million in potential bonuses. Not bad for a company that first shot to fame with a Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift headset.
The obvious question though is what does Facebook want with what was a start-up company aimed primarily at hardcore PC gamers?
‘Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,’ said Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. ‘Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.’
‘The incredible thing about the technology is that you feel like you’re actually present in another place with other people. People who try it say it’s different from anything they’ve ever experienced in their lives’, wrote Zuckerberg on Facebook.
‘Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won’t be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there’s a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform,’ he added.
‘We’re going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this’.
The response from hardcore gamers and developers has been predictably reactionary, with Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson immediately cancelling an Oculus Rift version of Minecraft. In fact he got so angry about the whole deal he then went on to write a blog about how virtual reality is going to change the world but Facebook is ‘creepy’.

Many ordinary Kickstarter backers have also been demanding their money back, but as you might imagine gaming isn’t really what Facebook is interested in.
‘This is just the start’, wrote Zuckerberg. ‘After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home.’
‘Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together. I can’t wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us’.
All of which is fair enough, but $2 billion does seem an awful lot when virtual reality has been a commonplace idea for many years now and Oculus VR don’t own any important patents on the technology. This is evident from Sony’s recently unveiled Project Morpheus, which many have already described as superior to Oculus Rift.


-->


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A MASON IN NIGERIA

By
 After all i have said about this fraternity if you are still interested in becoming a mason there are just simply ways in which you can do that, but inspite of my post i am neither encouraging nor discouraging you all i am doing is just to let you know more about this frat and there's more to come about those who have joined, the so called stars like jay-z, kanye west etc i guess its just 7 simple ways to join and off you go  Are there things you want to accomplish in your life? Are there ways you want to enrich yourself? Do you enjoy being with people you like and respect? As a Freemason, you’ll find friendship and fraternity. You’ll develop life skills like self-confidence, leadership, and effective communication. You’ll learn to work as part of a team  and to better yourself as you help others. Think about taking the first step into becoming a Mason. It is widely thought that one must be invited to become a Freemason or that Freemasonry is so exclusive as to be beyond the
240 comments
Read more

Soon You Won't Have To Type In Your Credit Card Number On Your iPhone

By
Apple plans to make online shopping a little easier this fall. iOS8, the new iPhone operating system that's coming out later this year,  will let you scan your credit card when buying something in Safari . Instead of typing in numbers, you'll be able to hold up your card and have the iPhone automatically recognize the numbers and punch them in for you. Here's what it will look like, with photos courtesy of 9to5 Mac: Apple debuted both the new iPhone and Mac operating systems in San Francisco on Monday. Though you can't get the updates until this fall, a few developers already have access -- and the credit card feature is just one of several changes that are coming to your phone and computer. The company also has plans to make texting easier, and might be changing the font on the Mac for the first time ever. Some apps  like Uber  already use similar technology to the new card-scanning option, allowing you to hold your credit card up to your phone and get the
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft Is About To Leave One-Third Of All Computers Vulnerable To Hacking

By
Hundreds of millions of computers running everything from ATMs to the power grid will be vulnerable to hacking next month when Microsoft stops supporting its old Windows XP operating system. Hackers have been holding onto flaws in Windows XP and waiting to exploit them until after the software giant stops issuing security updates on April 8, experts say. Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm, said it was “fairly dangerous” to continue using the 12-year-old operating system because after the deadline “victims can’t defend themselves.” “I certainly wouldn't run Windows XP after the 8th," Meyers said in an interview. Microsoft announced six years ago it will no longer provide security patches or technical support for the out-of-date software. Yet about  one-third of computers  around the world -- or about 500 million PCs -- still run Windows XP. On Microsoft’s website , a clock ticks down to next month’s Windows deadline an
4 comments
Read more