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by froo 4476 days ago
Sony announces Project Morpheus 6 days ago. Oculus sells to Facebook today and deal started 5 days ago (apparently).

This is either

a) Founders saw writing on the wall and decided to get paid early rather than have to compete with a company with much deeper pockets and a preexisting fanbase.

b) Facebook saw that Sony's announcement validated the space and decided to buy the company with most mindshare at the moment as it is an asset.

People have wondered why Microsoft didn't buy the company? Well, Oculus have seen what, $90M in funding so far? The investors would have wanted what.. 5X 10X ROI?

At 5X.. $450M is a metric fuckton (excuse the language) of money that they could throw at in-house development of something similar. I imagine having a VR kit that integrates heavily with Kinect has the potential to be huge, so they at least have to be thinking about it.
2 comments
kailuowang 4476 days ago
IMO it's not just the deeper pocket and preexisting fanbase, it's Sony's great relationship with the gaming industry (not to mention its high quality first party studios) that is almost impossible for Oculus to compete with. The founder then probably realized that gaming is no longer the main path Oculus should focus on. If the new strategy is to pursue a more broader application of VR then working with FB makes more sense than it looks.

As a gamer, though, I can hardly see any other application of VR having more potential to become mainstream than VR in gaming.

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qq66 4476 days ago
Tourism could be a huge application of VR. I want to visit about 1000x as many places as I'll ever be able to -- VR could be a big part of making that possible.
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dsl 4476 days ago
Even back before the Xbox One was announced people were digging up Microsoft patents on things like eliminating interference between "video headsets" and wireless controllers being used in close proximity. Thats a pretty late stage problem to be solving.

Also remember that Microsoft and Facebook have a pretty strong working relationship. This could be Facebook taking Oculus off the market in exchange for a bigger cut of ad revenues on Facebook search.

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