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How Facebook and Oculus Could Be a Great Combination
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Nate Swammer writes at Slashgear that with Facebook's purchase of Oculus for a cool $2 billion, the fervor surrounding virtual reality headwear quickly turned to disdain. Betrayal, confusion, and anger became the order of the day for contributors who gave Oculus $2.4 million through its Kickstarter campaign. But now that passions have cooled and looking at the issues dispassionately, the Facebook acquisition may turn out much better than anticipated for users. While many may have a fervent distrust for Facebook, this deal bodes well for Oculus, and by virtue, us.
First Oculus wasn't flush, and although Oculus may have had some hustle behind it, it may not have been enough. John Carmack, Oculus CTO, said via Twitter, 'I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.' The headwear already famously suffered from a supply chain issue not long ago, which actually stopped it dead in its tracks. Next, in their official announcement of the Facebook deal, gaming was barely a blip on the radar. It wasn't until the very end that gaming was even mentioned, with the bulk of the post discussing 'culture' and driving virtual reality forward. There was little to indicate any big titles were coming for Oculus.
The fact is, Oculus needed help. Not technical assistance, but someone who could be their Sony, more or less. John Carmack says he has 'a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.' Perhaps Facebook isn't the most popular choice, but they are the partner Oculus chose for their future says Swammer. 'Like Google purchasing Android in 2005, it all seems so strange right now [remember this story we discussed in 2009] — but we see how that turned out. If VR really is the next frontier, Facebook just staked their claim to a big slab of land in the heart of some virtual country they'll likely let us see someday — via Oculus.""
First Oculus wasn't flush, and although Oculus may have had some hustle behind it, it may not have been enough. John Carmack, Oculus CTO, said via Twitter, 'I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.' The headwear already famously suffered from a supply chain issue not long ago, which actually stopped it dead in its tracks. Next, in their official announcement of the Facebook deal, gaming was barely a blip on the radar. It wasn't until the very end that gaming was even mentioned, with the bulk of the post discussing 'culture' and driving virtual reality forward. There was little to indicate any big titles were coming for Oculus.
The fact is, Oculus needed help. Not technical assistance, but someone who could be their Sony, more or less. John Carmack says he has 'a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.' Perhaps Facebook isn't the most popular choice, but they are the partner Oculus chose for their future says Swammer. 'Like Google purchasing Android in 2005, it all seems so strange right now [remember this story we discussed in 2009] — but we see how that turned out. If VR really is the next frontier, Facebook just staked their claim to a big slab of land in the heart of some virtual country they'll likely let us see someday — via Oculus.""
Go go gadget FaceBorg
rewriting history since 2109
hopefully we will not be undone by our unreality 'helmets' & other assorted deception generation media mongrelity? new reality series http://www.youtube.com/results... promises return to genuine freedom for many
I speak for everyone when I say, he is RIGHT. We NEED this COOL technology!
We need it so bad, my pants are falling down and I'm getting excited. This is facebook we're talking about right? The dating website.
I think in the end, we will enjoy our Demolition Man style sex and become enlightened in our non-fluid transfer sex of the future.
Because I want VR now... WAAAAA I can't get it NOW.
like painting targets on our brains volunteering for additional WMD on credit mindphucking illusion of participatory chosenness
And color me surprised that the guy who just got a $2B cash infusion thinks this is a good idea. Gaming is barely a blip on the radar? Yeah, that's the problem, you asshole. Gamers bankrolled it; developers kept the momentum going; anticipated titles created the buzz.... but all of that barely registers against Facebook's piles and piles of money, right?
"If VR really is the next frontier " I expect OR to take a lot of arrows. Few pioneers reach old age.
Can I rip the FB crap out of it? That's pretty much the question that will determine whether I want to have it. I don't really mind having FB as the manufacturer of the thing, for all I care it could be made by FB, MS or CommieNaziIncorporated, as long as it's affordable, working and free of any baggage that tries to push me towards it manufacturer.
If it's used as some kind of vehicle to push FB onto the few who don't have it and don't loathe it on principle, then I can very well do without and am retroactively glad I decided against funding the kickstarter.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh good, we're getting the daily Hugh Pickens post out of the way early today. Can we get the daily Nerval's Lobster/Nick Kolakowski done early, too?
Business decision(s) aside, it feels completely unnatural that such a cool, grassroots company sold out to a behemoth monstrosity like FB.
I would really like to see FB taken down a notch (putting it nicely), and this I am afraid will draw more people to it, as this tech is very compelling. I don't want to have to use FB to play with VR on this level. Perhaps I won't have to.
Maybe Oculus did need the help referred to in the article, but couldn't there have been another way? $2B would be hard to turn down, but (imho) they could have gotten there another way, and maybe surpassed it.
just my $0.02
This is a great combination. The Facebook addicts who live in their mom's basement can now complete their illusion that they have a life, walking outside virtually and interacting with people. Think of the possible accessories, such as an orifice that is warm, wet, and pulsing.
Or will the FB infusion dilute it so much they're just screwed? If the latter, who could blame people for avoiding contributing in the future?
Carmack screwed the analysis quite thoroughly, and now its too late for them. One of two scenarios is in play here:
1) Facebook bought OR because they wanted to diversify their holdings to make themselves more resilient to changes in their core market. In this case, Facebook will likely leave OR mostly alone and except for adding some money to the pot, but when it becomes clear that OR can not or will not scale at the growth that Facebook wants/needs, then it will get the axe.
2) Facebook bought OR because of some overriding strategy that involves OR's technology. In this case, Facebook will not be allowing OR to keep going the way they have been going, which more than likely means very little if any emphasis on VR gaming, and instead is intended as a social platform for virtual interaction. In this scenario, the best that OR can manage will be to get some games developed and released, but to that end there will likely be no support from Facebook.
Carmack was correct when he stated that OR needed two things: first, they would need cash infusions at several points to be able to scale at the rate that flash-in-the-pan games require in order to meet their sales goals. Without that cash, developers would be reticent to make any games that truly took advantage of the platform because then they would be locked to it with no guarantee that OR could manufacture enough units to *not* severely limit sales of the game developers product. Facebook solves the cash problem, but only by reintroducing another reason for developers not to get involved: Facebook itself. Facebook has burned many developers before, and consequently developers are less likely to become involved with them than they would have been with any other company (possibly excepting Microsoft).
The second thing that OR needs is developer support, which, for the reasons described above, the Facebook deal makes far more difficult than it would have been if OR had been bought by almost any other company.
All things considered, OR might fare better having been bought by Facebook than going it alone, but that is by no means clear.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
This is precisely why Pearson dropped Occulus after the buyout. We had a cool piece of tech, and a company ready to deliver it the the place best suited to it -- video games.
Now we have a multi-billion dollar social media site willing to spend more on the marketing and propaganda budget for the deal itself than they are on the actual technology. Hence this article.
Facebook is the Walmart of the Internet. Occulus should have taken their cue from Snapper and walked away.
May the Maths Be with you!
whatever people think about VR it will remain a gimmick i don't see average non gamers buy devices that cost 350 USD
Don't forget that VR is just like 3d every 10 years they try it.
Like Google purchasing Android in 2005... we see how that turned out
Yes. It turned out to be an ecosystem that tracks the every move of hundreds of millions of people to data-mine for advertising purposes, and is full of malware and spyware. Anything bought by an advertising company like Google, Facebook or Twitter will exist to harvest your behavior.
That's what some of us don't want. We want a device that does what it says on the tin, and no more. A VR headset device please, not a "log into Facebook so your social graph is harvested and sold" device.
Captcha: disdain
the next Anthony Wiener wannabe sending me his junk in 3D.
We have not evolved enough for this technology.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Was this FB deal Carmack's play all along?
3. by moonboy asks: I once read, in Wired, an article that said you have an incredible headstart on everyone else for making "virtual worlds" on the Internet using your engine from the Quake games. Do you have any intention of doing this? Has anyone approached you about it? It would seem like a fantastic use of the technology with online gaming being so popular. Entire worlds online could be created virtually and very life-like with many different purposes.
John Carmack Answers: Making Snow Crash into a reality feels like a sort of moral imperative to a lot of programmers, but the efforts that have been made so far leave a lot to be desired. It is almost painful for me to watch some of the VRML initiatives. It just seems so obviously the wrong way to do something. All of this debating, committee forming, and spec writing, and in the end, there isn't anything to show for it. Make something really cool first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it's worth it! I do think it is finally the right time for this to start happening for real. While a lot of people could envision the possibilities after seeing DOOM or Quake, it is really only now that we have general purpose hardware acceleration that things are actually flexible enough to be used as a creative medium without constantly being conscious of the technical limitations. Two weeks ago, I pitched a proposal to develop some technology along these lines to the rest of the company. I may wind up working on some things like that in parallel with the next game project.
I think in a few years we'll all be having a good laugh about how Oculus doomed themselves with this move. I think there are enough people on this planet like me who are 100% distrustful of Facebook and anything they have to do with anything. I have long size made the vow that Facebook and its affiliates get zero dollars of my money and zero seconds of my attention.
We keep reading articles about how Facebook is on the way out, its core userbase of young hip twentysomethings is evaporating quickly, and soon its largest remaining userbase will be the octogenarian set, etc. The bubble is about ready to pop, and I predict (maybe we can have a good laugh at this in a year or two as well) that Facebook is very quickly going to go the way of Myspace, Livejournal, etc.: Namely, they still kinda-sorta exist but nobody save for a very small core few actually give a fuck, and neither of them are exactly cash cows.
There are plenty of other sources to get income from. But instead they took the easy option and sold their soul to the devil. And for the amount of money they were offered, who wouldn't? The bad guys in this are Facebook. They already have access to too much personal information about people. They don't need any more.
You can't polish a turd. You can, however, glue another turd to it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The backlash is because many people who are comfortable with tech think FaceBook are the biggest bunch of douches in the tech world. The primary reason they feel that way is because FaceBook treats EVERYTHING as an avenue to generate revenue off of your personal life, treats everything as if it belongs to them, and makes decisions about privacy that any rational person would recognize as highly questionable and implements them simply because they will result in a likely revenue stream.
Who wouldn't want a company like that taking a fledgling tech darling that many people really were going to make gaming soooo much better?
"Hi, little baby unicorn, meet Darth Vader - he's going to raise you..."
For myself, I can't wait to put on my partially subsidized Oculus-berg and play Elite Dangerous and dodge asteroids textured in Vistaprint ads and a constant background subliminal audio soundtrack about whatever the latest f***ing things is that Dr. Oz is hawking...
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" Facebook just staked their claim to a big slab of land in the heart of some virtual country they'll likely let us see someday — via Oculus.""
Uh..."let" us see it?
This is please login to Facebook to continue we're talking about here, which is exactly what you're going to see when you power on the new and improved FaceRift; a Facebook login prompt.
And our new vision of future VR just got its first major sponsor.
If you thought the internet got annoying with "Like us" popping up every damn where you click, just wait until your new branded internet VR/3D comes out...it'll make NASCAR advertising tactics look like your neighbors garage sale.
Seriously. The bubble is going to burst and burst hard.
It feels like Zuck has so much money to spend that he thought he'd get himself an expensive new toy. I mean, come on, how many expensive sport supercars can one get before they're not fun anymore?
OR is just the right toy for a buy, and that isn't RealTouch :)
Hold that thought. Zuck should probably get RT too - using a shell company, so the headlines don't say "Faceporn - Facebook gets into porn" - and with an OR+RT bundle he might even rule the world. Better Facebook than Sony in this case.
FB are now so established and enmeshed into other services that they are unlikely to suffer the fate of previous social networks. Nonetheless, it's hard to shake off the thought that users are fickle and FB's popularity may suddenly wane. Perhaps FB see it that way and they want to branch out into something more "solid", like hardware, or perhaps they've just decided that they have the cash and want to do something cool with it. Either way, it seems likely that this will mean a better Oculus arriving sooner. It might have a FB logo on it, and FB might have services for it. But so what? I don't have a FB account and if I bought an Occulus to play games then why would I worry about FB? I get why there's backlash but in reality, when you strip the emotion from it, it's likely a good thing for VR.
soylentnews.org
As long as the dumb people heads explode, this can only become a very good thing for the world.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It would have been nicer if it had help from a company that isnt pure evil.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
and no amount of weasel words will change my mind.
Who would wear one of these ludicrous contraptions? I mean, something like this or this seems fashionable...but only a complete douchebag would want to be seen wearing one of those Oculus/Sony gadgets.
Two billion of them, to be exact.
Rooting is futile
rewriting history since 2109
I think Zuckerberg ran out of other people's ideas after FB and is flailing in all directions to get into something (anything) else other than the sinking ship of FB to stay afloat. So he's going to use Oculus as the stalking horse to nail down every remotely relevant patent via his troll army of the undead (aka patent lawyers) and end up owning VR the way MS owned the PC OS. Otherwise $2B makes no sense.
2B? In Zuckerfag's dreams. Maybe a tenth of that.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I thought about your 1) but concluded no, because when companies do this, they acquire proven companies with a predictable revenue stream. Oculus is burning money and their business model relies on a bunch of people adopting new behaviors for interacting with their computers. A killer VR app is needed to make this work, even among the hardcore gamer market. FB is not the killer app for VR, so...there must be much more to this story we don't know yet for this to be the case..
For 2) I think this is on the right track and would add that if Oculus had an IP portfolio that provided licensable tech, AND there was a giant, burgeoning VR market about to explode, then there'd be even more weight for this scenario. Not sure Oculus had that key IP, however.
But given the huge amount of money paid--for a hardware company with no market share in a nearly non-existent market, I think about 40x too much--FB either bought a toy they wanted to make sure came to market, or they aren't done with acquisitions and the other shoe has yet to drop.
If FB wants to somehow integrate into a VR-type environment, then I think FB acquired the wrong company, and they should have courted CastAR. The CastAR device, being potentially highly mobile inside with smartphone hookup, and in AR mode, allows you to walk about, integrates into an environment is far more friendly to the kinds interaction FB provides. Either way, however, CastAR benefits by Oculus' success, as the vast majority of users still need to be convinced that VR or AR is a worthy thing. 'Foculus Rift' blazes that trail and CastAR grows alongside as the market does.
Feel free to read the article ... LOL
The headline should read: How Facebook and Oculus are Astroturfing to Make You Think it Could Be a Great Combination
Now that's just crazy talk.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The headwear already famously suffered from a supply chain issue...
And Facebook was their choice to help with this? Facebook might be very good at some things but supply chain management isn't exactly in their wheelhouse. Facebook could provide the deep pockets to deal with problems but manufacturing isn't their thing.
The bit that made me laugh was an interview with a board member I heard recently on NPR where he said something (paraphrasing here) like "we thought long and hard about this acquisition". They were offered $2 billion for a company not worth a fraction of that. If they didn't sprain something saying "Yes!" too fast then they were in violation of their fiduciary duty.
As awesome as everyone seems to think FB is, not everyone thinks so, the result is less market and exposure of Occulus. Call it like it is, a FB exclusive.
The fact that John Carmack was not told about the deal until after facebook bought it tells a lot about how this will likely play out. My prediction is that facebook has effectively killed the oculus.
If you read what any of the more thoughtful people who have been around gaming a while, they all think the acquisition was good - Penny Arcade, Carmack, Adam Sessler - all of these guys think it was a good thing for Oculus and gamers.
Just because gaming is a tiny part of it in the distant future, does not mean it's bad for gaming - any more than a great high-resolution display is overall used by gamers a tiny amount compared to movies. In the end gaming still gets a great display, and after Facebook gamers get a REALLY nice VR set that comes as close as anything ever has to making VR mainstream.
The guys at Penny Arcade understand that. Why can't you, or many Slashdot readers?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The thing that I'm hoping for is that this was a panic buy because somebody at Facebook got spooked that a killer rival VR social app might render FB gradually irrelevant. So the purchase was a defensive move only, to make sure that they leading VR hardware comes from their own house and can't be used to undercut them. I think it's quite possible they didn't have any concrete social VR application in mind. This would not be a strange move for a rich and paranoid company. I'll call this the "playing defense" scenario.
If FB really is just playing defense, then maybe they'll invest in Oculus to make sure it's the VR standard, but they won't really profane it with stupid Facebook shit, because they don't really know how to do that anyway, apart from maybe some app that nobody will really use (except maybe webcam girls).
Of course, if they really are playing defense and they realize that VR isn't really a treat to their market, maybe they will cut funding from Oculus and let the project rot on the vine. That's a real danger, and it would set back the field for a while.
On the other hand, maybe Facebook knows exactly what they want to do with Oculus, and they are about to bend the project to their evil will. Whatever that would be, I'm sure I would think it's an abomination. This is why the gaming community reacted to badly to the announcement. But even if this is true, it might not be a total catastrophe. The important question is whether the technical issues that make VR so hard (latency, pixel persistence, motion tracking, etc.) will be getting a lot of attention, or a little. If it is a lot, then even if the final product is larded up with stupid Facebook crap, a hack will exist to remove it, thus producing an excellent VR headset. I just wonder how much FB is willing to invest in fundamental VR research and hardware improvement. Hopefully they won't neglect this side of things.
... future kickstarters. Enthusiasts will invariably be skeptical about a sellout down the line before throwing cash at kickstarter again
Carmack doesn't like small startups who sell out to big companies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"it's a really bad idea... I have a negative opinion about that"
Well, I don't hear him complaining about getting 2 billion bucks from fb.
Check Palmer vomiting PR words at reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of_vr/) or Carmack defending datamining practices (because Amazon recomendations are so awesome) and disregarding privacy because it is oh so inconvenient (http://t.co/89l2U2oHrz).
Those people are businessmen, not heroes of the people. They are here to make the quick buck.
I just read *another* article about Nolan Bushnell *still* regretting the sale of Atari to Warner Bros. in *1976*. He wanted the cash to make the 2600 but lost all control. He thinks he could have found the cash elsewhere if he'd thought it out a little longer and since he started other businesses later there's no real reason to doubt his judgment there.
If the founders started Oculus Rift just to make a lot of money, then who can blame them, but if they have any ideas of where they want to take the company then it's over because it's not theirs anymore.
why he fuck cant i read this story in non beta
you probably like beta shit too fuckwit.
it wont have it too start too get devs to invest too much to reverse out!.
FUCK THE PLANET TOO MANY GREEDY DIPSHITS!!!
Learn how to read, you fucking fucktard.
At least i am thinking it will have you sign up for a facebook account during the driver install.
The head of Oculus said explicitly (on Reddit) that you would not have to have a Facebook account to use the Oculus,
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The basis of VR is 3d.. How much market share did 3d VT grab? As of last year... 3%
There's no product, there's no users, there's no market share and FB isn't a gaming company.
Now, throw in FB wanting to grab, categorize and sell everything about users and having the potential to capture background conversations and recognize everyone in the room... now the corporate scab of personal information has jacked it up a notch... so, even of FB can get past the first 4 obstacles, sorry, I'm not letting it in my house
As the article points out, Instagram and WhatsApp haven't been subsumed into FB in any obvious way following their acquisition. While not obvious facebook assuredly absorbed their databases and are using that data in ways that you don't know about. When you log into whatsapp you are logging into facebook regardless of what the UI looks like and does.
Why does Slashdot post such nonsense? To get suckers like me to reply I guess. Google buying Android was not in the least bit strange. The way Google makes money is adverts on web searching. People start to search web on mobile phones. Microsoft Windows phones would put their rival Bing as the default search engine. Google is looking to protect its core market.
Oculus and Facebook makes no sense at all. Microsoft and the Kinect makes sense as it's a controller they can use with their XBox. Oculus and EA, Valve, Microsoft, Sony, or even Samsung makes sense. How can Facebook help Oculus scale? What experience do they have in custom hardware manufacturing? In running a MMORPG or even a FPS?
Oculus is dead, the Sony headset will be locked to the PS, and we can forget about cheap VR headsets and playing our favourite games with it for the forseeable future.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I don't know why people assume Facebook is folding in every acquisition to Facebook when that's not what they have done with any company to date.
So far Instagram and WhatsApp have had final say on what happens with their products. Facebook has given no cause to assume that anything is different than what they have said with acquisitions so far - which is that they are hands-off with the acquisitions. Thus Oculus will do what they have said they will do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't see what the big deal is? Even if it may gimp Oculus as a gaming company, it's pouring tons of cash into VR R&D. Once the technology is developed other companies can take the helm. Oh yeah... patents...
I recognize that you are entitled to your opinion, but I do not think that the full list of acquisitions and where they are now necessarily supports your assertion. A fair number of those companies are now tightly integrated with the platform.
The more recent purchases are not bound so closely, but that may be because the integration effort is not complete as much as it may be that they don't intend ever to do so.
Facebook is not a trustworthy company. Oculus being owned by Facebook means that, as far as I'm concerned, Oculus Rift no longer exists at all. It may end up being a commercial success, but that doesn't make the situation any better for me, personally. It still doesn't get VR in my own hands.