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Facebook buying Occulus Rift for $2 Billion

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For a company whose main selling point was immense enthusiasm based on the independence and promise of a small innovative company... they sure picked a poor strategy here. Looks like I'll be waiting for the Valve VR competitor that is supposedly as advanced or more so than the Crystal Cove prototype
 
Headfoot said:
For a company whose main selling point was immense enthusiasm based on the independence and promise of a small innovative company... they sure picked a poor strategy here. Looks like I'll be waiting for the Valve VR competitor that is supposedly as advanced or more so than the Crystal Cove prototype
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Thing is, Valve ditched their project and gave the know how to Oculus. Sure, they can reanimate it at any time, but as far as the public is concerned, they're not working on their own VR set at this moment.

I wonder if they knew. Valve I mean. Or if Carmack knew before today.
 
I just last week read about the Rift DK2 and was super hyped to buy but decided to wait until the commercial version.

Now, 10mins ago I read about fb buying OR and my chin literally dropped to the floor and I let out a big "OH-MY-GOD"...I am literally devastated since one of my dreams seems shattered now. This is a sad, sad day.

I want to throw up seeing Zuckerberg's ugly pimple face now in conjunction with one of the most promising companies I had so much hope for.

Do you STILL believe we will see a consumer version of the OR late this year? What does this mean? How does effing facebook even have whatsoever relationship with VR. I mean I can somehow see where this is going (virtual social networks etc.) but I wonder what this now means for the interesting stuff like gaming, valve involvment and most importantly AVAILABILITY of a consumer OR?
 
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I puked a little in my mouth when I saw this... but on the bright side, maybe I can see more pictures of kids and food when I am in the middle of a game. Or better yet, a notification of an acquaintance bragging about their 5 mile run :thumbsup:
 
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lmao, I'm buying Sony's and waiting for the inevitable hackjob to get it to work with PCs

this company is dead to me
 
A deep pockets company purchases a start up for 2 billion, you would think they plan to make it profitable? In order to do that they have to deliver a product that sales to the market.

That is bad? Occulus Rift coming soon!
 
Sohaltang said:
A deep pockets company purchases a start up for 2 billion, you would think they plan to make it profitable? In order to do that they have to deliver a product that sales to the market.

That is bad? Occulus Rift coming soon!
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You've got a good point there. Facebook has lots of money and Oculus has some talented people working for them.

My fear is facebook's track record as well as their skillset.. i.e. what they are GREAT at and what they are NOT GREAT at. Can you imagine if a company like Nintendo(!!!!) ponied up and bought Oculus or even if Microsoft/Google had? The possibilities in my mind would shoot way out of control.

With Facebook? I'm just not as faithful as before. Time will tell..
 
swilli89 said:
You've got a good point there. Facebook has lots of money and Oculus has some talented people working for them.

My fear is facebook's track record as well as their skillset.. i.e. what they are GREAT at and what they are NOT GREAT at. Can you imagine if a company like Nintendo(!!!!) ponied up and bought Oculus or even if Microsoft/Google had? The possibilities in my mind would shoot way out of control.

With Facebook? I'm just not as faithful as before. Time will tell..
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According to palmer on reddit, facebook is the only (or the only with huge chunk of money) that is willing to buy oculus while allowing it to work independently.

The benefits palmer listed are
We have not gotten into all the details yet, but a lot of the news is coming. The key points:
1) We can make custom hardware, not rely on the scraps of the mobile phone industry. That is insanely expensive, think hundreds of millions of dollars. More news soon.
2) We can afford to hire everyone we need, the best people that fit into our culture of excellence in all aspects.
3) We can make huge investments in content. More news soon.
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I was shocked when I saw the annoucement, but am quite happy for oculus now that they have more money to work on what they dreamed about now. "the holy grail of vr" will not come cheap. Frankly I'm quite disappointed to see all the "community" backslash, to say the least.
 
Bubbleawsome said:
Yep. What sucks it that it was crowd started, but now they're like "oh! Money? Well, forget the other funders, we'll do it our way." Facebook tends to leave projects alone so maybe it will stay true to its goal.
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Are you sure you wouldn't sell out? I sure would if I get these 2 Billion. What they could have negotiated is to pay back say 5x of the sum everyone paid on kickstarter if that is possible (eg. if it is known who donated how much).

surasak said:
According to palmer on reddit, facebook is the only (or the only with huge chunk of money) that is willing to buy oculus while allowing it to work independently.

The benefits palmer listed are
...
Click to expand...

Yeah a first time poster believing the PR-doublespeak. Sounds like FB is already doing damage control in tech forums.
 
I have a feeling that zuckerberg will rue this purchase for that amount of money. The facebook name being associated with it has nuked the majority of it's target market.
 
Only 2.4 million out of 91 million was raised by kickstarter. The rest was traditional venture capital from places outside of crowdsourcing. (The venture capital was raised after the kickstarter though.)

If the kickstarter was a stock instead of a promise of a product, then though 2.4 million stocks would be heavily diluted when the company issued another 88.6 million stocks.

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I also do not see what the big fear of everyone is about facebook buying Oculus VR. You only spend this type of capital when one of two things happen.

1) The company you are buying has some unique intellectual property or trade knowledge.
2) The company has a unique business model that will generate a return on investment.

Oculus Rift is nothing really unique with intellectual property all they have is a lot of trade knowledge, something that given enough time Facebook could generate themselves at a far lesser cost. Thus the only reason to buy OCR is due to time issues such as time to market, or they believe OCR has something unique about them that a different company (such as sony) does not.

2 Billion is a lot of money, if they sell 80 million units (the amount of xbox 360 sold after 8 years), they would need to make at least $25 dollars profit per each unit sold or they would not make money on the investment. That assumes there is no further cost to bringing the product to market (which is unlikely.)
 
extremely bad news, I had high hopes for Oculus, but now I doubt they are going to keep on the same direction....
 
the hivemindthink is baffling. FB has proven to be quite handsoff with whoever they acquired. this is an incredible shot in the arm for it getting to market faster. win for anyone actually interested to buy it
 
Did Carmack really leave id? He was at Qcon last year :C
 
Futurama predicted it.

vugybeda.jpg
 
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