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Facebook Buying Oculus VR For $2 Billion
Several readers sent word that Facebook will acquire Oculus VR for $2 billion. Mark Zuckerberg says the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is the beginning of something big: "This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures." The obvious question is: why Facebook would buy a company focused on VR gaming? The Oculus team says, "But when you consider it more carefully, we're culturally aligned with a focus on innovating and hiring the best and brightest; we believe communication drives new platforms; we want to contribute to a more open, connected world; and we both see virtual reality as the next step. ... It opens doors to new opportunities and partnerships, reduces risk on the manufacturing and work capital side, allows us to publish more made-for-VR content, and lets us focus on what we do best: solving hard engineering challenges and delivering the future of VR." Put more simply: money and connections.
...sort of works for Facebook now? Bet he didn't see that coming.
Yeah, I'd be pretty damn pissed.
I mean I have no problem when a product flops, assuming the person creating the kickstarter didn't know it would flop. If they make a legitimate effort with the money they get, and they didn't miss-represent themselves, then that's fair in my opinion.
But this is basically them killing off what was a successful project. Maybe it's a reaction to the recent Sony announcement, but even if they thought they were about to lose, to me they still had a duty to the, inappropriately termed I guess, investors.
This almost makes me wonder if kickstarter needs to add some kind of protection against this kinda thing.
In my view (and I understand this isn't universal), when you buy into a kickstarter it's because you want to see something happen. It's like investing, but instead of expecting money out of it, you expect a thing to become available which otherwise wouldn't (and which you then might have to pay additional money to get). It would be like donating to PBS, receiving your mug, then finding out they'd sold PBS to TLC and were buying an island somewhere.
For those that view buying into a kickstarter as a gamble against getting the promised reward (which I accept as a valid view), then I agree with this argument. Oculus delivered the dev kit, and as someone who owns one, it's what was promised, with the added bonus that it caught on and there is actual software for it.