
Oculus Joins Facebook - kposehn
http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-facebook/
======
c0ur7n3y
Oculus just went from something incredibly amazing that I couldn't wait to be
a part of to something that I want nothing to do with. I suspect I'm not
alone. Humans are emotional creatures, not always driven by strict
rationality. Maybe I'll feel differently in a year.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I don't believe for a second you won't buy one. There's always this sort of
grousing, and it never matters in the long run.

~~~
gfodor
The problem for Facebook is that since there is such a distaste for them in
the dev community that they are going to have a hard time attracting
developers if a worthy competitor comes along. Devs are going to want to
target a more open platform, unless there is a massive advantage to going the
Facebook route. On the web, building a Facebook app is enticing because you
get access to a massive audience. For VR, your audience are people who have
the hardware, so until there is a large number of people who own VR goggles
the power really is in the hands of the developers and what platforms they
build their killer apps on.

------
JumpCrisscross
Curious to see HN's negative reaction to this announcement. The sentiment
appears to originate with gamers.

Gamers, particularly PC gamers, are a minority of computing end users.
Minorities get less attention than the mainstream. Oculus VR chose gamers,
particularly PC gamers, as its beachhead. The dedicated attention from such a
world-changing technology must have been special. The backlash against losing
that special status is understandable.

But VR's potential isn't limited to gamers. That is what Facebook recognised
and is capitalising on with this acquisition. Oculus, as a (perhaps _the_ )
leader in the consumer VR space, is well positioned to shape the future of VR
and with it consumer computing. They had a choice between a niche and the
market, and they are reaching for the moon.

The expanded mandate means gamers will become a minority of Oculus's customer
base. It does not follow that their experience nor expectations should
degrade. Preëmptively burning Facebook and Oculus for thinking big seems
petty.

I am open-minded about Oculus's future at Facebook. It is possible that
Facebook will mis-manage Oculus and squander its lead. It's also possible that
an independent Oculus would have missed the forest for the trees. That by
going 100% for gaming, it would have forsaken a greater destiny. Barring back-
seat driving by Facebook management, Oculus has more options at Facebook. More
options are good for a young company at the beginning of a open-ended road.

~~~
_zen
The negative reaction isn't because of any of that, it's because it's
Facebook.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, Valve, hell even Dell would have all been acceptable
acquirers for most PC gamers backing the Oculus Rift.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
What is a specific likely worst-case you have in mind with Facebook?

Risks with other potential acquisition partners:

(1) Valve - limited scope. Valve would be fine if Oculus's future were limited
to gaming. But they add little value, in balance sheet or experience, for a
broader play. Valve + Oculus is only marginally better positioned, for
revolutionising computing, than an independent Oculus.

(2) Microsoft - too conservative. Big organisation without a history of
funding moon shots. As for pairing Oculus with Xbox, I'd copy the concerns
with Valve.

(3) Dell - underinvestment. Dell is undergoing a private-equity turnaround
focussed on optimising operating metrics for an IPO. Not a healthy environment
for an open-ended, capital-hungry start-up with an adventurous future.

Apple would have been a fine home for Oculus. I suspect VR's market isn't
mature enough for Cupertino. But I do not see a material difference between
Google and Facebook. Privacy concerns exist at both, and both have a mixed
record of integrating acquisitions. What both have is lots of ambition and the
surplus capital and experience with which to fuel it.

~~~
michaelt

      What is is a specific likely worst-case 
      you have in mind with Facebook?
    

That they realise there's no overlap between their products, so they
discontinue the VR products and transfer the employees to web ad targeting.

More precisely they make a play for the "VR socialisation" arena but it's a
half-hearted attempt because VR socialisation is some manager's pet project
rather than their core business, facebook vr socialisation goes the way of
Second Life, and the consequence is the same.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> *[Facebook] discontinue the VR products and transfer the employees to web ad
> targeting"

Oculus has 50 employees [1]. Facebook did not pay $40 million per employee to
scrap their product.

Oculus is also a bleeding-edge hardware start-up. It was more likely to drop
dead all on its own than at the hands of well-capitalised owner.

[1] [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/oculus-
vr](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/oculus-vr)

~~~
michaelt

      Facebook did not pay $400 million per employee 
      to scrap their product.
    

If paying a lot makes acquisitions succeed, maybe facebook should have paid
more to make the acquisition even more successful :)

This deal reminds me of ebay buying Skype: Two technology companies, both with
reasonable products, but nothing to do with each other.

~~~
nathancahill
Nothing to do with each other, but eBay made $1.4B on the deal.

------
gfodor
This is a god damned tragedy. (And the smartest move Zuck has ever made.)

VR was supposed to be a new frontier, I have been so excited to see finally
the Next Thing was coming and it feels so much like the early days of the web
and computing. But now it's owned by the worst company on the planet when it
comes to choosing inspired thinking and pushing humanity forward instead of
just trying to get inside of our lives (and now our heads.) I am frankly
terrified.

Thank God for Valve, I hope they hit the gas and leapfrog these guys now on
the tech and poach as many of them as they can. Thank goodness there is still
plenty of work left to do and Facebook doesn't own all the VR patents. I am so
fucking scared of a world where Facebook has a monopoly on VR. I really hope
it doesn't happen.

~~~
Thrymr
> VR was supposed to be a new frontier, I have been so excited to see finally
> the Next Thing was coming and it feels so much like the early days of the
> web and computing.

VR has been the Next Thing since before there was a World Wide Web, if not the
internet itself. Maybe this time is different, maybe not.

~~~
gfodor
this time is different

~~~
to3m
This time is _even more_ different than the last time!

~~~
uvTwitch
This time the technology is mature enough to support the vision, and isn't
laughably poor and expensive.

------
vessenes
This is a good move by Facebook. VR is going to be huge, huge huge. It might
even be as big as Bitcoin. :)

I think what Oculus did was massively de-risk their next ten years. In their
business plans, there were undoubtedly very large gray circles with things
like "gain overwhelming market share (how?)" and lists of competitors that
included, well, everyone in tech.

If you had to pick a tech company to leverage your disruptive new consumer
technology, and make sure it kept the 'awesome', and was hacker friendly, who
would you go to?

In exchange, they probably lopped another 10-50x of potential value off the
top of their company. Not that they won't see some of that realized in
Facebook if this is succesful -- they will. But, they will be sharing the gain
around in exchange for getting access to that giant global customer base and
being able to tap the considerable resources available at FB.

~~~
Blahah
_> If you had to pick a tech company to leverage your disruptive new consumer
technology, and make sure it kept the 'awesome', and was hacker friendly, who
would you go to?_

google

~~~
prawn
I expected Microsoft to grab them and I'm surprised they didn't. Would've made
a smart fit with Xbox and given them easy ways to directly integrate it with
their OSs. Would work well with gaming, education, eventually business, mobile
and so on. $2b a few months ago would've been a small price to pay to get in
early on this, unless they have something comparable up their sleeves from the
research division.

~~~
presty
Well, Don Mattrick left last year and Marc Whitten's leaving/just left, so I
don't really find it surprising.

------
FD3SA
This is extremely disappointing. This technology had the potential to be much
bigger than Facebook. The Occulus was poised to create an entirely new
industry. They were pioneering a technology never before seen, with a legend
like John Carmack pushing the state of the art. I cannot think of a more
colossal mistake to make as a founder. Palmer Luckey has shown he has
absolutely no faith in his ability nor that of his team. Occulus had nothing
but success in their future. They had investors beating down their doors with
money, developers announcing support for the platform before even getting a
dev-kit, and consumers itching to grab hold of their product.

Facebook is the antithesis to Occulus. They have never created any technology,
they add zero value to the the real world, and have no future potential in the
long run. Occulus selling to Facebook would have been like Tesla selling to
Proctor and Gamble after they released the Roadster. A company with a
technology so radical it can change the industry, succumbing to weakness and
cashing out to an old money company that has no expertise in the field for
some chump change.

I am filled with sadness and disappointment. I believe Palmer Luckey will
regret this decision.

------
aviraldg
I don't want a "general-purpose VR headset". There are already many devices
described that way (that work well enough for that purpose.) I wanted
something built exclusively for the extreme requirements of gaming, and I feel
this acquisition is going to distract the Oculus team from that. Facebook has
no experience whatsoever in that domain, and the only way I see Oculus
benefiting from this is the huge cash reserves they'll have access to once
acquired. Truth be told, I was really hoping they'd get acquired by Valve -
that'd strengthen their existing partnership (which I'm sure will cease to
exist post acquisition), give them a good team to work with wrt. videogames
and VR in general, and put them in an environment where their core focus is
the same as that of their parent company. In this case, if the "experiment"
fails, Facebook will almost certainly dump the project. Every time someone
says "... we're going to make X a platform" before they actually have X, a
kitten dies somewhere. There are still technical issues with the Oculus
headset, and I'm afraid Facebook's "platform" focus is going to draw attention
away from that. In short, I don't see this working. If fact, if Oculus fails,
it might set the entire VR industry back several years. Luckily, we still have
some hope in the form of Valve.

What a waste. I hate Facebook for doing this. And I'm not too happy with
Oculus for accepting this either.

~~~
trhway
>I wanted something built exclusively for the extreme requirements of gaming,
and I feel this acquisition is going to distract the Oculus team from that.
Facebook has no experience whatsoever in that domain

com'n, VR FPV in FarmVille would be an experience to die for :)

~~~
aviraldg
Wouldn't it be better if we simply started farming IRL then?

Don't even get me started on the silliness that is Farmville - no more than a
glorified Skinner box.

------
malanj
Facebook is rapidly becoming a seriously dominant technology player. I used to
think of them as a "flavour of the year" play, but I'm having to readjust that
perspective pretty hard.

It looks like they really are driving a long term strategy of being at the
core on human -> human communication.

~~~
hosh
Yeah, I see this as a big move for FB, much bigger than for Oculus.

Someone I know had already identified FB as one of the Big Four several years
ago, analogizing to the Big Four during the robber baron days of steel and
rail. The other three are Apple, Amazon, and Google.

All four have some sort of machine learning / AI race going on. They are not
the only ones around (Twitter, for example).

But this is pretty big. Google has the Glasses project. Apple probably has
something cooking somewhere. And I have no idea about Amazon.

I also wonder if FB will keep the team together. It'd be a shame for John
Caramak to skip out after the acquisition.

~~~
gtremper
I'm (pretty)sure Facebook will leave Oculus alone; it would be dumb if they
didn't, especially with all the anti-Facebook sentiment in our current
zeitgeit. This is definitely a long term play towards becoming a major
technology company. It's interesting to see what Facebook will become when
"Facebook the website" is gone.

~~~
hosh
I'm also interested to see if the Second Life team gets shopped around, or if
they will still try to stay independent.

------
lyndonh
I was excited about Oculus even though I wasn't necessarily going to buy one.
But this acquisition is like Elon Musk announcing that Tesla will build a
small 1 litre diesel car next, or SpaceX's next mission is to Detroit.

I mean, I'm sure Facebook has some amazing PHP and Python on their backend
servers but has anyone not checked out the awfulness that is Facebook's web
site ? UX is not supposed to be a four letter word.

What do Oculus gain from this that they couldn't have obtained with their
$2.4m Kickstarter ? I don't believe Facebook won't be monitoring every penny
spent there.

Oculus was not our last hope, there is another:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avegantglyph/a-mobile-p...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avegantglyph/a-mobile-
personal-theater-with-built-in-premium-au)

------
kailuowang
I wonder does this have anything to do with Sony announcing her own VR project
Morpheus. Technology wise Sony's alternative didn't show much advantage, but
industry support wise it showed that it's a very very prominent opponent
Oculus VR has to beat. Selling it to Facebook seems to me an indication that
the leadership no longer believe that Oculus can be as successful in the
gaming industry as they hoped.

~~~
kybernetikos
Or, to phrase it differently, maybe they cared most about VR technologies
going mainstream, and were only doing it themselves because nobody else seemed
to be.

------
curiousDog
I wish they joined valve. Or even Msft for that matter, we'd atleast get
integration with xbox.

------
bane
Ouch, no thanks. Talk about dashed hopes and dreams.

------
jstsch
See main discussion at:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469115)

------
znowi
I can't imagine Carmack working for Facebook. This is surreal. As Palmer noted
in his blog post he was skeptical when Facebook first approached them with the
idea. I suppose Facebook eventually made a monetary offer they couldn't
refuse. Whether Facebook makes it a VR advertising unit or Facebook Glass,
it's likely to be something very different from what Oculus envisioned as an
independent company.

------
angersock
It's rather entertaining to see the difference in comments between the Oculus
announcement page and the Facebook page.

------
megaman22
I can't believe Carmack is thrilled about being part of Facebook. His twitter
feed seems a little sparse today...

~~~
CamperBob2
He's too busy talking to Ferrari dealers, hopefully.

~~~
zanny
He was already crazy rich off id, though. He had his own aerospace company
that he funded out of his own pocket for several years. He isn't the kind of
guy who really needed another break - I always got the impression he left
Zenimax for Occulus because he wanted to get back at the front of the tech
revolution train after going in the back seat for a decade.

~~~
Tyr42
Didn't his space company run out of cash? This could help re-fund that.

~~~
kderbe
That's right, Carmack said Armadillo Aerospace would "[...] probably stay in
hibernation until there’s another liquidity event where I’m comfortable
throwing another million dollars a year into things." (
[http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/08/01/carmack-
armadillo-...](http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/08/01/carmack-armadillo-
aerospace-in-hibernation-mode/) )

------
jarmitage
For the sake of kicking off a discussion...

"Facebook [...] a company focused on connecting people, investing in internet
access for the world and pushing an open computing platform."

Can anyone put facts or numbers to those last two statements? Is Facebook
putting any concerted effort beyond PR/vanity projects into those goals?

~~~
loceng
I imagine the investing in internet access for the world is wholly because one
way to grow their own user numbers is to get more people connected to the
internet - if they can just spend enough money to associate people with that
messaging as their advertising budget - then they may start off with a good
relationship to those new internet users.

~~~
makomk
At this point the only way to grow their user numbers significantly is to get
more people connected to the internet. The question is whether it's something
they seriously think they can do or just an attempt to convince Wall Street
they have growth potential.

------
pera
> We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I
> just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.

[https://twitter.com/notch/status/448586381565390848](https://twitter.com/notch/status/448586381565390848)

------
dsrguru
I said this on the other thread, but this is the most terrifyingly awesome
technology acquisition I've ever seen. Facebook chat in two years: put on a
headset and get teleported to a room in a virtual world where you can talk to
your friends' avatars. Skype and Google+ Hangouts suddenly seem very 20th
century.

I've always found Facebook's stock to be a ridiculously risky long-term
investment since their entire growth plan is predicated on monetizing an
already established customer base, where a single event that causes people to
switch en masse to a more private/secure social network would destroy the
company. After today's acquisition I no longer think this.

~~~
bane
> put on a headset and get teleported to a room in a virtual world where you
> can talk to your friends' avatars.

Uhm...No thanks. Second life has already been tried.

Why does this idea keep coming up? It sucks every.single.time.

~~~
dsrguru
Either you're misunderstanding me or you're equating an anthill with the
pyramids of Giza. In Second Life, your avatar is a sprite on a screen. With
Oculus Rift + Virtuix Omni, your avatar is _you_. It's like the Matrix. Or
Avatar. Or a [lower resolution] lucid dream where you can interact with people
from the real world in video game maps. For me, that's truly awesome in the
literal sense of the word.

~~~
bane
No, I understand you exactly. But I'm also paying attention to the last 30
years where this keeps getting tried and either it doesn't work or it
degenerates into a 2nd life analog.

There's nothing magical about 2nd life, but in a first person POV and in 3d.

~~~
dsrguru
Would you find it magical if it were truly immersive 3d where eye movements
would scroll and an Omni-like 3D treadmill actually worked?

~~~
bane
No it's even worse. Now I have to work even harder to have the marginal
experience I can have from my desk.

------
general_failure
I cannot imagine how Carmack is excited about this

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Maybe he gets enough cash out of it to restart Armadillo.

------
andrewmu
I too am instinctively repelled by this acquisition. I did prefer the idea of
the technology remaining independent and supported on multiple platforms.

MS, Apple, Google, Sony all have their own closed(* Android is arguable, I
know) devices that they would prefer to limit the technology to. The benefit
to Facebook is to have a primary interface perhaps hosted on another platform
but not completely dependent on it.

I can think of three obvious negatives:

Carmack's apparently successful work using mobile graphics hardware to
generate acceptable output for the Rift could allow a much wider adoption
among the casual users who don't have a hardcore gaming PC/latest generation
console. Facebook might focus on producing a low-cost version that lacks the
resolution/low latency which would be preferable to gamers / professional 3D
users. An extensive patent portfolio could inhibit higher-end competitors from
easily addressing that market.

The second concern is that Facebook would in political superpower-like ways
abuse the power to grant access to a popular VR platform and demand
concessions such as mandatory Facebook accounts for gaming, an egregious cut
of royalties, banning of anything that "replicates Facebook functionality"
etc.

Thirdly, is the probably the most common knee-jerk consumer issue; ultra
creepy Facebook, logging and mining everything that you foveate on, from the
ad logos in virtual environments to the facial/bodily features of your
friends' avatars. They build a more detailed model of your own desires and
motivations than you consciously have of yourself.

------
iandanforth
Any chance this deal can be called off? Terrible decision.

------
arjie
So the backlash seems to be:

* Because the Oculus guys are seen to have sold out.

* Because Facebook is seen to be a ruthless exploiter of personal information.

I, for one, was actually days away from buying an Oculus device but I'm going
to hold off for now. It's a combination of the negativity from here being
infectious and the fact that if Facebook decided to buy now, maybe there's
something much bigger on the horizon (apart from the DK2).

------
higherpurpose
I hope Valve releases their own VR headset now, and locks Oculus out of Steam,
with only their own VR headset being compatible. Valve has already done all
the same research, and are even ahead of Oculus. I could see them turning it
into a product by mid-2015, which is probably sooner than Oculus' own consumer
version.

~~~
catfoods
They don't need to lock out other headsets, that's kind of the opposite of
their service model and philosphy. But they would have the advantage of
controlling the distrobution platform, their in-house software/engine, and
their hardware. Lots of advantages there, similar to Apple.

Theirs will likely become the superior product, organically.

~~~
zanny
I just hope they make it a hackable platform like they claim the steam
controller will be, and like steamOS already kind of is. Because we can know
for damn sure if there is profit opportunity in Occulus any openness about it
will be stomped into the dirt.

------
seferphier
>...it might not seem obvious why Oculus is partnering with Facebook...But
when you consider it more carefully, we’re culturally aligned with a focus on
innovating and hiring the best and brightest

Looks like ALL companies in this world would be a good fit for a facebook
acquisition.

------
iambateman
At least some of Facebook's history of arbitrary platform creation and
destruction has to do with their youth as a company. They are growing up and
we've seen successively fewer missteps in the past two years.

So there is room to hope for a successful partnership. Oculus has a really
phenomenal product and partnering with Facebook is going to scale that product
MUCH faster than it would've otherwise. This could be the perfect deal for
both companies.

Don't get me wrong, my heart sank when I heard it was Facebook. And the WSJ's
article on how disingenuous they were with their kickstarter backers is still
real. But in the truly long-term, we might look back on today as a big moment
for virtual reality.

------
Geee
/r/oculus isn't happy:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cvry/facebook_acqu...](http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cvry/facebook_acquires_oculus_vr/)

~~~
colmvp
Checkout this prescient thread on /r/oculus/:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wf6mg/so_no_way_to_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wf6mg/so_no_way_to_confirm_this_but_my_friend_works_in/)

------
seferphier
Rules of being acquired:

1st rule: you do not talk about the money 2nd rule: you DO NOT talk about the
MONEY 3rd rule: you talk about how the acquirer and acquiree shares the same
vision and dreams that would enable the acquiree to build great things.

------
will_work4tears
I could be wrong, and I even think this might be an unpopular opinion (I'm not
a huge FB fan, FWIW), but I think this is pretty good for Oculus. It's
exposure writ large. Also funding, but from a Marketing perspective this can
open some serious doors for them.

That said, I'm saddened. A possible greater exposure could have happened from
another company purchasing it, Apple for instance, or even (some will
shudder), Google.

I'm not going to give up on Oculus just yet though, but I'm somewhat
disapointed. Even if Facebook doesn't ruin it, it's... well, it's still
Facebook.

~~~
georgemcbay
I shuddered at the Apple suggestion, not the Google one.

With Google there would still be a very excellent chance the device would run
across PCs (Windows/Linux and Macs) and maybe even iOS devices (if Apple
allowed it) along with Android. With Apple, obviously not, it would be Mac/iOS
only and fuck everyone else.

~~~
will_work4tears
True enough, though certainly the same with Microsoft, and possibly Google
(Android only?). Maybe Facebook will be the one really only open one? I only
worry that real games will not get a chance and we'll have a glut of "Totally
Immersive Candy Crush!!!"

------
protomyth
Sony is probably happy as heck since it effectively resets everything to give
their project a chance. Also, I am a little sick of the "joined" terminology.
You got bought and are no longer in control of your companies destiny. Unless
you pull a NeXT, "joined" is not true.

------
mhartl
_At first glance, it might not seem obvious why Oculus is partnering with
Facebook, a company focused on connecting people, investing in internet access
for the world and pushing an open computing platform._

An "open computing platform"? What are they talking about?

------
zecg
"The affect heuristic is an instance of substitution, in which the answer to
an easy question (How do I feel about it?) serves as an answer to a much
harder question (What do I think about it?)."

------
noclip
It seems from the reaction that for Facebook this wasn't just a $2 billion
deal but a $3 billion deal — $2 billion in cash, plus $1 billion of Oculus'
value wiped out by the announcement.

------
jimmcslim
Wow, I thought the real-life James Halliday was going to be Palmer Luckey,
Gabe Newell, or John Carmack. I didn't pick that it could be Mark Zuckerberg!

------
wil421
It sounds to me like Oculus just sold out. Great now instead of a new way to
game we are going to have something like Lawnmower Man Facebook.

------
the_honorable
Pretty funny that all the comments on the linked article are tied to Facebook

------
nevster
One word - metaverse. That is all.

