
Facebook acquires Oculus VR - nav
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971?stream_ref=1
======
lawl
Damn! I don't like this.

I had hoped they jump in bed with valve.

Yes, I just really dislike facebook, so I hate to see them aquiring something
i was really excited about.

Also from the article:

> _After games, we 're going to make Oculus a platform for many other
> experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a
> classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a
> doctor face-to-face -- just by putting on goggles in your home._

Nah, I'd rather not, thank you. I prefer to actually visit my doctor where
facebook doesn't get all the data about it.

~~~
selmnoo
I am shattered right now. I was _so_ happy for Oculus VR, I wanted it to
become big, I wanted it to become something truly special.

And now this happens. I'm horrified and speechless.

This is the day I stop cheering for Oculus VR and get behind Sony's Morpheus:
[http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/19/tech/gaming-gadgets/sony-
morph...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/19/tech/gaming-gadgets/sony-morpheus-
virtual-reality/)

Notch on this deal: "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)).

Oh God why did this have to happen

~~~
s3r3nity
>I am shattered right now.

Oh come on -- this is just ridiculous. They (Oculus) now have many many more
times the resources at their disposal than before to make countless
imaginative projects.

I know i'll get down votes for saying this, but if Google was the buyer, there
would be much more positive comments here. Use some rational analysis here,
folks.

~~~
incision
_> "Oh come on -- this is just ridiculous. They (Oculus) now have many many
more times the resources at their disposal than before to make countless
imaginative projects."_

Honest question, do you have anything to base this idea that of "many many
more times the resources" on? Have any companies been acquired by FB and
immediately gone about pushing the envelope in ways that don't strictly line
up the existing business of FB?

I think the concern here is entirely justified.

The Rift is a breakthrough product made possible by people who believed enough
to back it via Kickstarter. Once delivered the community set about creating a
whole range of wild stuff and general made those creations freely available.

Nobody wants to see their creativity hindered by some new corporate developer
standards or restricted to distribution through something that sits behind a
Facebook login.

Personally, I want the Rift to let me walk on the surface of the sun not allow
me the privilege of paying a Facbook/NBA partnership for artificially scarce
virtual "courtside" seats to a game.

~~~
debt
Instagram has been allowed to go at their own pace since they've been
acquired. Parse, also, has essentially gone on it's own and created things at
it's own pace. It seems they're having the same attitude with Whatsapp. I
assume, especially with Carmack coming over, that FB will be extremely hands-
off with the base technology behind the rift.

Facebook is an engineering company; in the way it's run and with what it
pushes out to consumers. It's a flat organization essentially run by engineers
I mean shit, the CEO built the original product. The Rift under Facebook, I
guarantee you, will be the best VR product in the market in five years; which
would be much faster than the decade and half it would've taken on their own.
Speculation I know, but again with the way Facebook is run, it seems that this
acquisition will only expedite the awesomeness-that-is-to-come.

~~~
hack_edu
Yes, but Instagram and Parse are services that fall within Facebook's major
product area and have teams with related experience to Facebook's daily
operations. Oculus is not a service, just a technology; one that has no
relation (nor clear route to one) to any Facebook-held product.

~~~
froo
> Oculus is not a service, just a technology; one that has no relation (nor
> clear route to one) to any Facebook-held product.

Exactly. This is what diversification is all about.

At it's core, Facebook is now a public technology company, which means that
creating value for its shareholders is it's primary focus.

Buying something that looks like it might be a big deal before it becomes a
big deal is doing that. Killing it before it has a chance to become big,
especially since it has no "relation to any Facebook-held product" (thus it's
not competing) is definitely not in their best interest.

~~~
bradgessler
I think most of us really wanted Oculus to be an insanely great technology,
not Facebook's "diversification strategy".

~~~
AznHisoka
exactly. FB has experience with stuffing LOLCat pics in your FB feed. Not
innovative tech.

~~~
xerophtye
>FB has experience with stuffing LOLCat pics in your FB feed

Seriously? Are you really saying that it's FB's evil plan to stuff cat
pictures in your pictures? And not the fualt of those with whom you connect on
FB?

It's rather sad how so many people just think of FB as a "website" and not
realize the truly innovative efforts they must go through to keep it running
as such a massive scale. Not to mention, they built their own servers and
pushed initiatives to help the whole industry set up proper infrastructures to
achieve massive scale

~~~
sentenza
It's also weird how many don't see the big white elephant in the room: People
hate Facebook. For about 3-4 months now, whenever I talk to a non-techie and
Facebook comes up _they_ start complaining and telling me how they're trying
to get away from it. They even mention other services that are connected with
Facebook (Instagram, What's App)!

Is this happening only here in Germany? I was definitely surprised to be back
in "the mainstream".

~~~
threeseed
> People hate Facebook

This is complete and utter nonsense.

People would not be using the site if they did.

~~~
libraryatnight
I haven't had a facebook account in some time, but when I did I hated it. I
used it because there was this fear that I'd miss something, I'd be left out
of some loop.Once I left, I realized that was nonsense, the people who
mattered text, call, or email me.

My dad hates facebook, but he uses it because there's some family and friends
on there that make him feel obligated to stick around.

Breaking away is easier than it seems at first, but there are plenty of people
who dislike facebook who still use it.

------
lightcatcher
I just finished reading "Masters of Doom" last night. The book is about id
software, the company that made Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake and that
pioneered 3D gaming. The book primarily follows John Carmack and John Romero,
two of the founders of id. Carmack was responsible for developing almost all
of the 3D engine code.

After finishing Quake, (what I believe to be) the first fully 3D PC game,
Carmack wanted to work on a 3D virtual world inspired by the Metaverse from
Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The book at least makes it sound like Carmack
believed that a 3D virtual world was the next big thing. Despite Carmack's
wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first person shooters and
other video games.

Carmack is now the CTO of Oculus VR. Keeping in mind Carmack's virtual reality
ambitions and Zuckerberg's mission to "connect the world", this acquisition
makes a lot more sense than it does thinking of Oculus VR as purely a gaming
company.

~~~
d23
> Despite Carmack's wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first
> person shooters and other video games.

Really? I actually just finished MoD, coincidentally, and it seemed to me that
the rest of the team wanted to do things other than the repeated Quake/Doom
re-hashing, and Carmack basically refused. He wanted to work on his engine.

~~~
zacharyz
This was more a recent development and not covered in MoD and is the reason he
left id. He wanted id to focus on VR but he couldn't get bethesada to buy in
to the idea.

------
reitzensteinm
As a game developer that's interested in doing some work with the Oculus, I
could see this going one of two ways:

1) Facebook could stay hands off, giving the company the company the breathing
room and capital to absolutely revolutionize gaming, and then on to other
fields.

2) Oculus as a "communication platform" is attempted too soon and the core
team is drawn away working on pet projects resulting in a drastic lack of
focus, which would kill the product (momentum is key here).

Given that Facebook is the acquirer, I'd lean much further towards #1. If it
were Google, I'd bet money on #2 (see the GAE thread today).

I don't think the privacy stuff is going to be a big deal, by the time this
turns from being an interface device to an integrated product like Glass, the
market will have matured and there'll be plenty of competitors offering the
former.

So, it'll either good or bad. You read it here first, folks.

~~~
nobodysfool
>Facebook could stay hands off

No, they could have made a sizable investment without having a controlling
stake in it. No, they Acquired it. You don't do that unless you want to change
something there. My best hope is that the Zuck sees something cool going on
with the Oculus and wants to try his hand at something new. My worst fear is
that they will develop the 'Oculus API' as a wrapper around the original API
and Facebook. Now Facebook can ad ads featuring your friend's faces in
games... and free 3d games if you just watch a 15 second ad for every five
minutes that you play...

~~~
dzlobin
My god, the tinfoil on HN has become unbearable. Are you even listening to
yourself?

~~~
parksy
Facebook is a company whose revenue is entirely based on advertising spend.
They pitch their network's services based on the fine level of control you can
have over market segmentation - the more information Facebook has about
people, the better they can promote these services.

It's reasonable to speculate on the extent to which Oculus can resist being
assimilated into the already-existing business model. It seems less reasonable
to speculate that Oculus will become Facebook's flagship product and not just
some sidekick to enhance their current revenues if possible (or if that
doesn't work, consigned to the dustbin of history).

Since all of this is speculation anyway, what do you think is going to happen?

------
sz4kerto
The reason why people haven't commented yet because we can't find the words. I
have no immediate idea what can FB do with Oculus VR, even if I read Zuck's
comments.

~~~
fasteddie31003
Facebook knows that Facebook.com is toping off. It wants to spread its reach.
I really don't think there will be any crossover between Oculus and Facebook,
just like there isen't any crossover between Windows and XBox.

~~~
tommoose
Windows and XBox have a strong crossover in DirectX

~~~
adventured
Not to mention that XBox is powered by a modified version of Windows.

------
apetresc
They have some of the best engineers and VPs in their space, huge hype,
mindshare, and by all accounts a kick-ass product.

Forget why Facebook is interested, I don't get why Oculus would even consider
selling for 10% of a WhatsApp. Their star was rising if anyone's ever was.

~~~
giarc
Star rising vs star risen.

WhatsApp was already a star. It had millions of users and was the "go to" app
for communication in many countries. We forget that here in NA. Oculus, as
cool as it is, still doesn't have a huge customer/user database.

~~~
efuquen
I don't see how you're really addressing the point, the idea is that Occulus
Rift's star risen would be way way more valuable then WhatsApp ever could hope
to be. We all know they still have a journey in front of them, but the idea is
they could have kept going on their own, and you know, had a star risen moment
vs getting acquired before a general consumer product was released.

But, you get a couple hundred million users that make next to no revenue and
will be incredibly difficult to monetize and your star has risen. Pretty hard
to compete with that rock solid proven model I guess.

~~~
giarc
I tend to disagree. Facebook is worth billions and they created a business of
sharing photos and status updates. WhatsApp allows you to do this as well, but
on the mobile platform that has escaped Facebook's grasp. WhatsApp is a hugely
successful piece of software that fits within Facebooks portfolio very nicely.
It also doesn't come with huge overhead, something like 20 engineers keep
WhatsApp running. You don't have to speculate that WhatsApp (and it's 1/2
billion user base) is worth money.

On the other hand you have a hardware startup with no customers and an
unproven product. Sure they have sold a bunch of dev kit's, but those are far
from being ready for the consumer market. In addition to not having a
customers, they have Sony building a similar product and remember that Sony
already has hardware in millions of homes and therefore roll out would be much
easier. Occulus might build a great product, but competition is going to be
much harder given Sony's pursuit. I would argue that Occulus has proven to be
an innovative and smart company, but in no means have they proven to be a
successful business and therefore their "star has not risen" just yet.
Speculation on future value is much harder with Occulus and has too many "ifs"
and therefore, currently, Occulus is not worth anything close to the $19B paid
for WhatsApp.

------
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 begging for their latest and greatest,
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, in
exchange for killing their product.

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

~~~
prawn
I'm not excited about this news either, but let's say Oculus doesn't do this.
What if, in two years, Valve have a similar product out there, with more
convincing immersion and their existing community and game contacts. And Sony
have Morpheus pushed to PS4 fans and their existing developer contacts. And
for those two years, Oculus have moved along with their existing community and
existing funding.

Maybe they wanted the certainty (from almost anyone) that they could ramp
things up and make sure they were strong and first out there?

~~~
FD3SA
If Occulus didn't do this deal, they:

\- Would have had access to unlimited VC money by being one of Kickstarter's
hardware darlings, having John Carmack, and putting out an series of
critically acclaimed products in the form of dev-kits

\- Would have been able to grow their open platform, which allows direct
access to developers from all markets, not just FB/Sony/Valve or other closed
systems

\- Would have the power and autonomy to guarantee developers that they were
all equally important, and that their needs would be the company's top
priority

\- Would have the potential to create an ecosystem leading to an entirely new
industry, not unlike Tesla Roadster, the iPod/iPhone/iPad, etc.

Now? They've destroyed their reputation with developers by guaranteeing
they'll be second class citizens to FB's financial interests, by sacrificing
all of their autonomy. They've exchanged all of the future potential of their
company for $2B.

Look at it this way, Snapchat declined $4B for their trivial messaging app.
Yet Occulus, which has so much potential, folded at a measly $2B?

It's just a damn shame.

~~~
prawn
Maybe it's the AAA developers that are worth all the money and not the rest?
Maybe their Series A and B investors changed their mind about looming threats
and were keen to get cash fast?

Also, remember that Valve's technology is apparently excellent and they also
have the ear of developers.

(Don't get me wrong, I don't like this development at all. DK1 owner, but I
don't use Facebook.)

------
neotek
Why on earth would Oculus sell at all, least of all to Facebook? What possible
reason could Facebook have to purchase a company so far removed from its core
competency?

People in the /r/oculus reddit are already expressing strong feelings of
betrayal - eighty comments in under ten minutes, none positive.

What a bizarre move.

~~~
pdq
Agreed it's bizarre from Facebook's perspective.

But completely logical from Oculus' perspective -- if someone offers you $2B
to cash out before you've even launched, you'd be silly to say no.

~~~
devindotcom
Now _that_ is the mentality that's killing companies.

~~~
a1a
Say that to Elon Musk. Imagine the inventors using this money in the same way
Musk did. If they do (or at least try) I'd say humanity comes out on top -
even though this killed our dream of VR in the near future.

~~~
crassus
How many Elon Musks are there? Most billionaires seem to spend their money on
fancy yachts and high-profile charity projects that make them look superior to
their peers. Few are deploying their resources to push the technological
envelope.

~~~
dustyleary
Although I don't agree with you about their motives (wrt just trying to look
superior to their peers), I won't argue that point.

But even if you think their motives behind the charity are selfish, don't
discount the effects.

How many Einsteins, von Neumans, Ramanujans, or Musks (pick your genius of
choice, really) are stillborn in the developing world because of malaria or
HIV? How many never achieve their potential because of malnutrition or polio?

If the Gates Foundation eradicates malaria and polio, and we get a few more
world-changing geniuses out of it, they'll have done much more to push the
technological envelope than any other endeavor.

~~~
MrScruff
I'm not going to argue that eradicating malaria is a bad thing, but it's
inaccurate to infer that the only thing preventing the worlds extreme poor
from being leaders of industry is good health.

------
pabb
I think Notch of Minecraft fame just cemented the folly of this in a Tweet a
second ago:

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

The guy literally just visited Carmack (whom he admits is his idol) and the
Oculus team less than a couple weeks ago, and kept mentioning how excited he
was to start working on new VR games. I think this says a mouthful.

~~~
balls187
How much does Notch have to do with Minecraft these days? I thought it he was
working on his space game.

~~~
MrZongle2
Notch is a founder and owner of Mojang, the company that owns and produces
Minecraft.

And his space game has apparently been on hold for months.

~~~
balls187
Right, but from what I last heard, Jeb has been the maintainer with full
creative control of Minecraft.

~~~
pabb
Notch isn't developing, but it's ultimately his IP. He's made over $100M in
licensing deals on the brand alone. I'm sure he's going to be the shotcaller
(if not just a providing a massive influence) for any large-scale potential
deals involving it.

Even with that aside, he's a massive figure in the game development community.
A lot of people respect him and look up to him for making out huge in the
Indie game in industry pretty much of his own accord. His opinion is pivotal.

------
czr80
I'm starting to think that fb thinks their stock is overvalued, and that they
should buy as many things as they can before the price drops.

~~~
sbt
Yes this is exactly what's happening. They are turning into a holding company,
this is just even more diversified than WhatsApp. FB's business model cannot
justify the FB stock price, they are effectively using money people thought
(wrongly) they were investing in social media and deploying it to better use
because they know FB's revenue model is not going to live up to investors
expectations long term. I can see the Bloomberg tomorrow stirring up
excitement for FB's retail investors so they won't take a hard look at the
numbers they actually invested in.

~~~
zzleeper
What would you do if you were FB? As people have said, they may just be
pulling an AOL, which sucked for TW's shareholders but was great for AOL's.

------
RKoutnik
From Facebook investor relations, looks like the price was $2B, $400MM cash,
$1.6 stock, with options on $300MM more.

> Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to
> acquire Oculus VR, Inc., the leader in immersive virtual reality technology,
> for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in cash
> and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion
> based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March
> 21, 2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional
> $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain
> milestones.

~~~
waps
So they don't even have the money yet and have already lost 1.6 / 69.35 * 64.5
billion = 112 million.

Good start.

~~~
randartie
Who doesn't have the money yet?

------
Kapura
This is probably the most forward-thinking move that Facebook can make. I've
personally been kicking around ideas about what society will look like in a
post-VR revolution world, and it seems that Zuck et. al. have come to the same
conclusion that I have, namely, it will change what it means to interact
socially with others.

Imagine a 10 year high school reunion that exists not in the old gymnasium,
but in a virtual space where you can catch up with them.

Imagine sitting in the front row of the next presidential debate, where you
can see the sweat forming on the candidate's brow under the lights. You can
look over and talk to your friend sitting next to you without disturbing the
action.

Imagine being able to tour a facebook friend's new apartment without leaving
your chair.

This is super duper exciting, but I hope that Facebook doesn't kill it.

~~~
interpol_p
> _Imagine a 10 year high school reunion that exists not in the old gymnasium,
> but in a virtual space where you can catch up with them._

Why do people keep saying stuff like this? It doesn't sound good or exciting
_at all_. It sounds about as exciting as video calls, QR codes, and NFC
payments. Which is to say, utterly lacking in creative vision and not of
benefit to humanity.

VR has a real shot at transforming part of the gaming landscape. That's where
the exciting stuff will happen — and it won't even change all of gaming, just
a small and focused subset.

~~~
badsock
Or Zuckerberg's examples: seeing an avatar of your doctor in 3D, or your
classmates in a classroom. It's got the whole "imagine a fridge that can tweet
you when your milk is about to expire!" smell of having to work far too hard
to come up with something interesting-sounding.

I think the reason people were excited was that this could have be something
transformative - a new sensory conduit into our brains. And I think the
disappointment is to have that be replaced by something so mired in the same-
old same-old. A stereoscopic rendering of the world as it already is, by a
player that's practially a figurehead of lack of innovation (other than in ops
management and revenue models).

------
SEJeff
Wow, I never saw Jon Carmack working for Zuck. To be honest, they aren't even
in the same league. This makes me a sad panda.

~~~
bluedino
Suck has a hundre John Carmacks (of various fields) working for him

~~~
kybernetyk
Which is sad because in the end Facebook is all about showing ads to people
who don't want to see them.

~~~
grkvlt
Rather the opposite - Facebook want to show adverts _only_ to the people who
_want_ to see them. Anything else is just stupid, why on earth would anyone
pay to advertise to people who don't want to see my adverts?

~~~
bunkat
Does anybody actually like seeing ads when they are browsing around Facebook?
Who thinks to themselves 'I feel like buying something, let's log in to
Facebook and maybe a random ad will come up for something that I want'. If
people want to spend money, don't they just search for it or hit up Amazon? I
wonder, if given the option to show adverts when you first sign up - how many
people would select it?

------
ChuckMcM
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Now with the new "Live your friends life
timeline feature, you can virtually live anyone elses life being projected
right into your own set of VR goggles!"

Ok so that is the dystopian view :-(. I really don't get this move yet, much
to process. I suppose 'hang out with your friends in a virtual bar'? concepts?

~~~
wonderyak
There is much more money to be made in 'dystopian' tech than there would be
with 'utopian' tech.

------
ghc
I am astonished. I wonder if John Carmack could have ever imagined he'd work
for Facebook.

~~~
pdq
I'll be surprised if John stays on past his golden handcuff period. The amount
of money he stands to make after joining Oculus less than a year ago is
certainly large.

~~~
ramidarigaz
He's in the lucky position of being able to pick pretty much any project he
wants to work on and be accepted. From what I know about him, the thing he
really cares about is pushing the tech forward, and as long as Oculus VR can
do that, he'll stay on board. If he gets too stifled there, he'll probably
jump ship over to another VR project.

I sincerely hope this is a good thing for Oculus, but it could definitely go
badly too...

~~~
ivanca
A virtual reality game console deeply integrated with facebook? What could go
wrong there?

~~~
deegles
How about a Snow Crash-style Metaverse?

~~~
trobertson
Already exists. It's called Second Life.

------
georgemcbay
Installing Oculus VR USB drivers...

Please login using your Facebook account to continue.

Email: ________

Password: ________

~~~
jhrrsn
This, absolutely this. I just can't comprehend why anyone with such a great
buzz around their fledgling product would get into bed with FB, dooming their
work to ad-riddled nonsense.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Yeah, like Instagram has become.

------
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.

~~~
saturdaysaint
_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._

There's a lot of infrastructure that a gaming company needs in 2014 that
doesn't have that much to do with Oculus's core gaming focus and that Facebook
has very direct experience with. Look at how long it took Sony to get remotely
competitive with the Xbox's interface; look at powerhouses like EA and
Nintendo embarrass themselves year after year. System UX, payments, network
scaling, "social", building a customer friendly game marketplace. I don't
think these are the areas Luckey, Carmack and company can't wait to work on in
the morning, but they're perfectly suited to Facebook.

In a better case scenario, I can see Facebook (or Apple or Google, to be fair)
helping Oculus build another Steam competitor _years_ sooner than otherwise
imaginable. Imagine if there were two brilliant companies competing to push
the envelope on Linux gaming.

------
lispython
Here is John Carmack's response from twitter:

> For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week.I expect
> the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.

> I can't follow the volume of tweets today, so if you want a real answer to
> something, try in a couple days after things die down.

> I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The
> cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.

> I suppose I will get a FB account now, so that may lead to some writing a
> little longer than tweet length...

~~~
mcv
Surely the fact that he didn't have a Facebook account yet says something.

------
pavlov
Facebook is today what Microsoft was in the '90s. With a soaring stock price
and a solid, if somewhat staid, core product that enjoys a near monopoly in
crucial markets, the company looks for nebulous long-term innovation by buying
interesting startups in various fields and promising them near-term
independence.

Microsoft's shopping spree included companies like WebTV, Hotmail, Softimage
and Bungie. Maybe Facebook will also splurge on a game studio soon.

------
Mz
Someone shared this with me with the words "RIP Oculus."

Can the megacorps please stop eating our young? Microsoft has a terrible
history of buying up companies and then killing the project for some reason.
Posterous got bought (I don't recall by whom) and killed. These big companies
tend to not develop this stuff. They just eat it.

~~~
Taylorious
I don't think it's fair to blame the megacorps and not the companies that are
selling out. All these startups talk a good game about being cutting edge,
disruptive, a passionate place to work etc. but it's all BS. Engineers work
their asses off working on something they believe in and the minute some
megacorp waves a big check in front of the founders they sell out. They might
be passionate about their product but they are still more passionate about
giant piles of money.

It's stuff like this that makes me not want to work for a startup. These guys
had a great business. Everyone loved their product. Even the people who got
physically sick from using it still thought it was cool and wanted them to
succeed. They had a perfectly viable company that could have been very
profitable on its own. But hey who wants all the responsibility and work of
having your own profitable company when you can just sell out...

Let's not even get into how unethical it is to use something like KickStarter
to get you started and then turn around and sell out for billions a couple
years later before you even ship a consumer product.

~~~
Mz
My comment elsewhere in this discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469426)

Not justifying it. Just saying if you are David, Goliath can be awfully hard
to stand up to, psychologically, especially if Goliath is offering you money
rather than looking to kill you (even though, long term, the result may be the
death of your company).

------
Sindrome
OcculusVR is dead. Can someone make a new Oculus VR that focuses on video
games and not enabling Facebook to control everything you see. Get on it.

~~~
skymt
Sony's "Project Morpheus" is supposed to be on par with the current Oculus kit
and it's explicitly intended to pair with the PlayStation 4.

~~~
DonGateley
People who have had the opportunity to see both the DK2 and the Morpheus have
almost all thought the Morpheus a better device. I think Luckey et. al. saw
the handwriting on the wall and sold for the best deal they could while they
still could into a market where they won't need to compete with Sony, MS, and
Google directly.

They have no magic and they know it. Sony will trounce them technologically.
Not getting to market before Sony is a fatal shortfall. I think they knew all
along that they'd fall short going toe to toe with the big guns. There is
something about Luckey that has always said huckster to me.

On the other hand, games are but the miniscule tip of the tip of the VR
iceberg and the new placement with respect to the larger market could benefit
grownups like me why could give a rat's a __about games and social but see
endless passive entertainment possibilities. Of course, Sony is there to beat
in those domains as well.

~~~
OWaz
>"People who have had the opportunity to see both the DK2 and the Morpheus
have almost all thought the Morpheus a better device."

Do you have any reputable links to support this?

------
viraptor
Ah, I get it! SecondLife 2.0 now with facebook integration.

Which may not be a bad idea on its own, but I don't think people would be that
interested in it for a long time... (quicker/better/easier mobile integration
is what people would appreciate imho) I may be completely wrong though, maybe
it's the new thing.

------
richliss
I think that people would have been happier if it had been acquired by North
Korea. I was seriously excited by OR, but for me personally its now DOA. It
says a lot about a company that Sony is now the preferred alternative.

Everyone expecting an instant turn to the dark side are naive. This is going
only one way:

1\. Facebook will say "We're hands off".

2\. They'll persuade Carmack to stay and they'll burn cash to make it dominant
and in no way corrupted by FB or data capture.

3\. Once dominant they'll slowly remove privacy from it and other things geeks
and people who care hold important. Carmack will quietly move on to something
interesting, and few will notice.

4\. The rest of the population will stay with it as they don't know/care, and
geeks and everyone else will need to use it even though they really would
prefer not to.

Classic frog boiling situation.

~~~
DSingularity
Sony has a pretty good record when it comes to supporting gamers and not
trying to get one on them at every chance... __cough MS cough __

------
evo_9
Fuck. This pisses me off for some reason.

~~~
rjd
Same reaction here. I'd say more about my opinion of Facebook and Zuckerberg
business capabilities and behaviour, but it would add nothing to a civil
discussion...

EDIT: for some laughs have a read of the Kotaku thread on facebook :
[https://www.facebook.com/kotaku/posts/10102759696153589](https://www.facebook.com/kotaku/posts/10102759696153589)
people are not happy

------
frakkingcylons
Palmer Luckey (founder of Oculus VR) just wrote a statement[0] on the Oculus
subreddit:

"I’ve always loved games. They’re windows into worlds that let us travel
somewhere fantastic. My foray into virtual reality was driven by a desire to
enhance my gaming experience; to make my rig more than just a window to these
worlds, to actually let me step inside them. As time went on, I realized that
VR technology wasn’t just possible, it was almost ready to move into the
mainstream. All it needed was the right push. We started Oculus VR with the
vision of making virtual reality affordable and accessible, to allow everyone
to experience the impossible. With the help of an incredible community, we’ve
received orders for over 75,000 development kits from game developers, content
creators, and artists around the world. When Facebook first approached us
about partnering, I was skeptical. As I learned more about the company and its
vision and spoke with Mark, the partnership not only made sense, but became
the clear and obvious path to delivering virtual reality to everyone. Facebook
was founded with the vision of making the world a more connected place.
Virtual reality is a medium that allows us to share experiences with others in
ways that were never before possible. Facebook is run in an open way that’s
aligned with Oculus’ culture. Over the last decade, Mark and Facebook have
been champions of open software and hardware, pushing the envelope of
innovation for the entire tech industry. As Facebook has grown, they’ve
continued to invest in efforts like with the Open Compute Project, their
initiative that aims to drive innovation and reduce the cost of computing
infrastructure across the industry. This is a team that’s used to making bold
bets on the future. In the end, I kept coming back to a question we always ask
ourselves every day at Oculus: what’s best for the future of virtual reality?
Partnering with Mark and the Facebook team is a unique and powerful
opportunity. The partnership accelerates our vision, allows us to execute on
some of our most creative ideas and take risks that were otherwise impossible.
Most importantly, it means a better Oculus Rift with fewer compromises even
faster than we anticipated. Very little changes day-to-day at Oculus, although
we’ll have substantially more resources to build the right team. If you want
to come work on these hard problems in computer vision, graphics, input, and
audio, please apply! This is a special moment for the gaming industry —
Oculus’ somewhat unpredictable future just became crystal clear: virtual
reality is coming, and it’s going to change the way we play games forever. I’m
obsessed with VR. I spend every day pushing further, and every night dreaming
of where we are going. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined we’d come
so far so fast. I’m proud to be a member of this community — thank you all for
carrying virtual reality and gaming forward and trusting in us to deliver. We
won’t let you down."

[0]:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of...](http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of_vr/)

~~~
mwilcox
Wow. He is getting demolished there.

~~~
archagon
Yikes. "Fuck you, Palmer." What the fuck? Folks, this is why creators on the
internet have public meltdowns and abandon their communities and/or projects.
(See: Phil Fish, TotalBiscuit, and many others.) Simply despicable how these
so-called "fans", who have _no idea_ how to run a multi-million-dollar
business, can turn on a dime and start slinging vitriol at the person they
claimed to idolize just a day earlier. How about, you know, giving the fucking
guy the benefit of the doubt? You know, just for a bit, instead of tearing his
fucking throat out?

The older I grow, the more I feel that people need "internet cards" that can
be forcibly revoked until they at least develop a base amount of empathy.

~~~
manish_gill
They never had any problem taking money from these fans, though. Now they sell
out to Facebook (yes it is a sellout), and fans get angry, you want to "revoke
their Internet card"?

No, they don't get empathy for getting acquired for $2Billion.

~~~
archagon
1\. We don't know anything about the acquisition. We don't know why it
happened. We don't know the terms. Nothing is clear yet.

2\. People have a right to be angry, but what kind of hubris and egotism must
a person have to tell Palmer Luckey to go fuck himself and to call him scum,
right to his face? Do people really think this man went from passionate
inventor to greedy businessman overnight? I think the top comment in this
thread as well as Notch's response demonstrate the healthy _adult_ way to
respond to this news. Personal attacks are the lowest of the low, and yet
sadly they're the norm on the internet.

~~~
manish_gill
1\. We know enough, and we can make reasonably informed guesses. Palmer has
been giving out enough information on his sub-reddit. In their own words:
"nothing will change!", but we know that it's not true. Facebook is
_acquiring_ them, not entering in a Partnership with them, regardless of the
PR speak.

2\. Eh, while I agree that personal attacks are bad, they should have (and
probably did) seen this coming. They're smart people, who got a great
jumpstart because of a community. They were most certainly aware of what this
community thinks of Facebook. They entered into this anyway. If anything, this
was a slap in the face of all those people who have supported them from the
beginning. The people who gave their money to support their vision.

> Do people really think this man went from passionate inventor to greedy
> businessman overnight?

Umm, yes? It's not that hard to believe, to be honest. I don't know if I would
have turned down the deal with so much money on the table either.

~~~
s3r3nity
Hmmm until you're presented with multiple $billions (BILLIONS!) of dollars,
probably money many of us will never see, and you have to make a choice
between your product or probably an early retirement, it's impossible for us
to judge a person and call him a "greedy businessman." I might have made the
same choice.

------
whatgoodisaroad
Is anyone else reminded of this passage from the prolog to Neal Stephenson's
Diamond Age?

> You could get a phantoscopic system planted directly on your retinas...You
> could even get telaesthetics patched into your spinal column at key
> vertebrae. But this was said to have its drawbacks ... it was rumored that
> hackers for big media companies had figured out a way to get through the
> defenses that were built into such systems, and run junk advertisements in
> your peripheral vision (or even spang in the ... middle all the time - even
> when your eyes were closed. Bud knew a guy like that who's somehow gotten
> infected with a meme that ran advertisements for roach motels, in Hindi,
> superimposed on the bottom right-hand corner of his visual field, twenty-
> four hours a day, until the guy whacked himself.

------
Myztiq
$2 billion in total value [1].

$400 million in cash.

$1.6 billion in facebook stock.

Plus "$300 million earn-out in cash/stock based on the achievement of certain
milestones."

1\. [http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-
CO-20140325-912577.html](http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-
CO-20140325-912577.html)

------
dsirijus
This is an ideal time for introspection. Here on one side you have the company
you hate the most - Facebook. On other, one of the hacker culture produces -
Oculus Rift.

And Facebook buying Oculus makes you mad to the point of blood boil.

Think it through. See what angers you. Analyze it. Then destroy it and move
on.

------
comatose_kid
FB gets a lot of hate on HN, but I think this is a really important strategic
deal for them.

Consider:

* No one really knows how wearables will play out yet

* It is within the realm of possibility that as headsets get better (end goal: stylish), they will enter the mainstream. This means more content will be consumed there (cellphones are an obvious analogy)

* FB pays to play in this space with a world class team which has shown an ability to produce and iterate on hardware in relatively short time.

* This also gives FB more consumer h/w chops, something it will need as FB integrates with devices that are ever more personal in nature.

It shows that FB is playing offense, working to invent the future, not just
resting on its laurels.

------
erikpukinskis
I guess I'm in the minority, but I think Facebook is a fascinating parent for
Oculus.

Oculus has a technology head start, but that only gives them maybe a couple
years on the cheap duplicators. In order to gain a strategic foothold their
real competition is in their "app store"/content portal aspirations. They're
in a race to see whose virtual space you start in when you put on your VR
headset.

But in that realm they are competing with Sony, Microsoft, and Valve, all of
whom have large user bases already using their portals. On that battle Oculus
is at a severe disadvantage. By joining Facebook they have a network of users
they can plug into, and a much bigger one than their competitors at that.

Second, Oculus is run by hardware and software engineers. They have an
extraordinary team in that regard, which has allowed them to hire and expand
in those areas very fast and still keep the talent bar high.

In order to build a compelling portal in a totally unmapped design language,
they need world class UX and social designers. Because they are so engineering
heavy, I don't think they would have an easy time identifying and integrating
those people as an independent company, even with Andreesen/Horowitz pulling
strings for them.

Facebook already has some great, productive, battle hardened UX teams, and I
suspect they have many of the best social designers in the world. By selling
to Facebook, Oculus is taking that huge question mark off the table.

In exchange they've taken on the question mark of possibly fading into
obscurity in an indifferent parent organization. That's a roll of the dice.
But the worst care scenario for them is they quit and start over with a LOT of
cash, a rockstar reputation, and a knowledge of exactly what their acquired
ghost company is organzationally incapable of doing.

And lastly, I don't think Palmer cares if HE wins. He wants to pull as much
resources into the VR project as he can. Full stop. He'd happily sacrifice his
company to do that. If Valve wins and he quits Facebook having failed to make
it work there, he'll boot into Steam VR with a huge smile on his face knowing
that _he won_.

------
exodust
I'm surprised people even think Oculus Rift will catch on beyond the early
adopters.

It's just another 3D TV technology - sounds cool, is cool, but not in a long
term way. Nobody cares much about 3D TV anymore because in practice it wasn't
all it cracked up to be. It was hype.

When you strap a display to your head and replace your mouse with your own
neck muscles, suddenly you are more limited than before. You can't rapidly
spin 90 degrees to face an opponent in a fast-paced action game for example,
without hurting your neck.

When you're sitting at a normal computer screen, you can look away for a
second, out the window, to think or pause. Can't do that when the monitor is
strapped to your head.

When you're typing on a keyboard, sometimes it's helpful to quickly glance
down to target a specific key. That too, is gone with a monitor strapped to
your head. There's a bunch of other limitations that will render any VR tech,
no matter how advanced from what we played with back in the 90s, as just a
cool gimmick... like the steering wheel controller with pedals. After awhile
you sell it on ebay because it's not a long term thing.

~~~
fmax30
Hmm , they could have added two frontal camera to it , so that when you paused
a game or just wanted to think or have time for your self. you could just
press a button and the on screen display would start displaying what ever was
in front of you.

~~~
exodust
Hah... yes good idea. But the screens should instead or in addition, flip up
or fold out of the way for normal sight, while still keeping the headset on.

It will be a special occasion thing for mainstream Facebookers, and people in
general. People like their "secondary things" too much I think. Those things
we miss if they're not within reach -

\- sipping a beer \- patting your cat \- talking to someone in the room \-
Seeing with your own eyes \- glancing at TV in corner of room \- people
watching/ people in your house watching \- checking phone messages \- looking
at different distances to give your eyes a break. \- multi-tasking \- heaps of
other things we do while using normal screens. VR makes it hard to continue
doing those things in parallel.

Basically, these VR toys need to be flickable with very little effort, to get
them off your face real quick! 2 billion. Funny.

------
sukuriant
No! Please, please, please no!!! I've actively avoided Facebook for several
years and now Oculus is making me choose between awesome tech and not having a
facebook account?! REALLY?! What.. why!? What could Facebook be doing with
this that they want it. I just. Why? No. No no no no no.

~~~
Kiro
I'm pretty certain you won't ever need a Facebook account to use Oculus Rift.

~~~
sukuriant
I don't even like the concept of associating with Facebook in any way. I don't
want to have to justify myself when I go and buy an Oculus Rift ( "The money
is going to Facebook, but it's okay because they have really awesome
technology, even though I hate everything they stand for in every other market
they're in" )

~~~
Kiro
Ok, if you're so full of hate for Facebook then I understand why you don't
like this deal on an ideological level.

------
aresant
Zuck is buying his way into the next generation of consumer digital
consumption.

Trying the Oculus for the first time was one of those "this is going to be
huge" moments in my life akin to seeing the first iPhone demo.

FB's entire business went to mobile, and pre-IPO there was a lot of discussion
around if they were going to figure mobile out.

Now they own arguably the best team and technology that's going to be in front
of the next wave of consumption.

Palmer & the early Oculus team deserve the huge success, but man I hope they
stay hungry and keep innovating given the brilliance that they gave us with
the 1st Dev Kit.

------
jstsch
Wow, that was unexpected. Interesting, but unexpected. But not sure if I won't
cancel my devkit.

What I find interesting in Oculus' blog post
([http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-
facebook/](http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-facebook/)) is that they
write about an open connected world, but Facebook is everything but that.

~~~
npizzolato
That's because you're viewing "open" and "connected" through technological
terms, as in how other technology can connect with Facebook and how open the
Facebook platform is. If you view the words instead in terms of people --
opening people's lives to friends and connecting people around the world at a
level that was almost impossible before the rise of social networks -- then it
makes complete sense.

------
ac2u
Guess this is now the most successful kickstarter ever.

~~~
venomsnake
And also the one with the biggest share of pissed off backers.

~~~
pepon
Indeed...

The problem with Oculus kickstarter project was that you were buying a dev
kit, not a final product. So now they sell the company and you have a dev kit
for a facebook product... and the final usage of the Oculus may be now very
different than the one you thought it was going to be when you purchased the
dev kit...

------
pekk
Something I think people are completely missing is FB's opportunity to gather
eye tracking data using the headsets. Eye tracking is one of the next obvious
steps for Oculus to implement in their headsets and it's an extremely valuable
prospective source of data for Facebook.

Facebook is all about gathering ever more intimate user data. They can already
put together a reasonably complete record of all the sites you are visiting
anywhere on the net using their +1 button loads. Now they can go beyond clicks
to see things you even thought about, actually even things that you weren't
even thinking about yet.

For example, Facebook could easily detect if you were gay by looking at where
your eyes went during a session. Maybe you haven't even admitted it to
yourself yet, but Facebook already has that information ready for advertisers
or whoever has an interest in 10 years.

------
hoopism
I am pretty sure Jeri Ellsworth (AWESOME) had worked with Valve and is now
working on a somewhat competing platform to Oculus. Perhaps they could use
some attention in light of this? [http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/02/technical-
illusions-aims-f...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/02/technical-illusions-
aims-for-low-cost-augmented-reality-glasses-with-castar-interview/)

~~~
obsurveyor
Jeri Ellsworth ‏@jeriellsworth 41m We're doing the VC roadshow in the next few
weeks. So happy for all the excitement around VR/AR these days.
[https://twitter.com/jeriellsworth/status/448665150568951808](https://twitter.com/jeriellsworth/status/448665150568951808)

------
arjn
Interesting... Is this a play against Google Glass ?

I'm not sure how Facebook could benefit from Oculus VR unless they're starting
a completely unrelated business (never mind what Zuckerberg says in the post).

~~~
HillRat
Well, if Google's going to be a robotics and AI company, it's not irrational
for Facebook to go into telepresence as a kind of next-gen communications
property. They've got the cash to go big, and their dependence on a single,
easily-substituted service as their source of revenue is about as big an
Achilles' heel as any company can have.

------
fletchowns
I guess this probably means I'll never get to use it since I don't have a
facebook account

------
Kiro
What's with the negativity? What exactly do you think will happen that's so
bad?

~~~
evo_9
Virtually anyone else with the pockets to buy them would have been better.

Microsoft for example have to be kicking themselves right now. After last
weeks PS4 VR headset announcement I honestly expect them to buy Oculus
immediately. I'm shocked they didn't or got out bid.

I wonder if Carmack was in on the talks... he couldn't have possible left ID
to cash in like this... he's got to be pissed off.

~~~
ChrisClark
Carmack has always wanted to build a full VR world/universe, if that's
Zuckberberg's vision, they actually might fit. Crazy though.

~~~
thenomad
That's a very good point.

And that might well be Zuckerberg's vision. He probably read "Snowcrash" when
he was about 10, after all.

------
OedipusRex
From the people who brought you Doom and Facebook...

This could go either way, Facebook could leave it on the path it was on and
just act as a parent company and the Oculus will be as awesome as we had hoped
it would be.

Or

Facebook brands itself all over the Oculus, closes it down to Facebook's
proprietary software and opens it up to ads, killing what some view as the
catalyst of the VR bump recently, then Sony takes over as our best hope. I
love Sony but I want to see VR on more than just the Playstation Brand.

Here is to hoping that Facebook stays as uninvolved as possible with the
Oculus.

~~~
savethejets
Regardless of how this goes with Facebook's meddling, developers have left the
platform.

Ask Ouya what happens when no one is developing for your hardware...

------
ChikkaChiChi
Has anyone considered that the Oculus team was scared by Sony's Morpheus
project and decided to cash out while they were still relevant?

I've not experienced either device, but I consider this at least plausible.
Maybe Sony had already figured out solutions to problems Oculus was still
toying with.

~~~
damon_c
I was going to say the same thing. At GDC last week, the general feeling was
that Sony's tech was more than competitive and seemingly much closer to an
actual consumer product than anything from Oculus.

Fear makes people do unexpected things.

------
mcescalante
As long as they don't turn it into Facebook Glass (which it sounds like it may
eventually become) it may not be the worst thing. I think with Facebooks cash
the Oculus team might be able to get a quality consumer headset for gaming out
a lot faster than as a "startup" without having to worry about multiple
additional rounds of funding. The founders also probably couldn't say no to
$2b...I wonder if they'll bounce when they can or who even is going along with
the acquisition.

------
orky56
I believe all the negativity here is as though David (Oculus VR) has partnered
with Goliath (Facebook). What I don't understand is why HN users are already
able to rationalize why Facebook is the antagonist here and why Oculus VR
might not have a strategy bigger than gaming.

~~~
Don_
Facebook has already proven to be a huge antagonist in many many ways. We can,
however, give Oculus the benefit of the doubt; they might have ended up doing
nasty things even if they hadn't gotten acquired by Facebook, sure, but
Carmack's past actions were never even close to the nastyness of Zuck's
actions. It's just a matter of analyzing the past and making a hypothesis on
the future based on that. I don't see what's so difficult to understand.

------
NathanKP
Well that's too bad. Deep down I was really hoping that Elon Musk would buy
Oculus VR so that one day I could jump into my Tesla, put on an Oculus and
enjoy a VR enhanced driving experience on my way to the Space X flight to the
Mars colony.

But seriously, of all companies that Oculus could have sold to Facebook is the
least innovative, and I'm skeptical that they will be able to pull of anything
nearly as interesting as other companies that might have wanted to but Oculus
VR, such as Google.

------
StillBored
I'm not sure this is really all that big of a deal. Mostly because I don't
really see hard evidence from the oculus guys that they have solved the two
main problems with VR headsets. Resolution and latency. Sure, they talk about
it a lot. [http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/the-latent-power-of-
prediction/](http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/the-latent-power-of-prediction/) but
the resolution is still low, and the frame rate numbers don't appear any
better than what I remember from my days at the university in the 1990's
playing around with high end SGI's driving simulation systems.

Back then people talked about those problems too, even with systems getting
60FPS @ 640x480. I was a test subject for a number of studies being conducted
and overwhelmingly it was an unpleasant experience. It was impossible to
suspend disbelief because even tiny (I don't have the figures handy) frame
lags, especially during rapid head movements were extremely noticeable, and
gag inducing.

Mostly, I think people shelved the systems because the technology wasn't
ready, the estimates back then IIRC was it would take a 4x resolution and 4x
frame rate bump before it was worthwhile.

Both are probably possible, but the latency numbers are harder than it seems
because of the fact that framerate != frame latency due to pipelining in the
sensor and graphics systems. The resolution numbers are probably a matter of
cost. LCD's providing 1080p in a couple inches are also probably significantly
more expensive than the cost target needed to make these things mainstream.

------
ckaygusu
My relationship with Oculus VR were just merely following the threads on HN
and even I have this disturbing feeling of betrayal.

------
froo
It is really astonishing the amount of anti-Facebook hate in this thread.

Yes, this isn't part of Facebook's core competency. They still bought it.
Could it mean Facebook is attempting to diversify?

How about lets wait and see what happens before we vilify the Oculus founders.

~~~
thearn4
I think it's because FB is basically a modern day white pages, whose core
mission is mine user data and deliver ads to people who don't want to see
them. I think much of the disdain is in the fact that a company like this can
manage to gain so much valuation in the first place.

Not saying I necessarily agree with that, but I can at least understand how it
does leave one with the impression that priorities in the tech industry and
wall street are completely out of whack. Instead of solving 'real' problems
(energy, medicine, education, etc.) we disproportionately value some rather
inane activities.

------
zzleeper
A quick question about the valuation:

Six days ago [1] we got an article where the most popular comment was this:

"I'm amused by it. It's a transfer of wealth from shareholders of those
companies to founders and VCs. These are also the companies with dual class
shares designed to keep control in the founders' hands. They all say it's to
be able to focus on the long-term, but really it has bred empire building and
poor stewardship of the shareholder's capital."

Since is Andreessen is in the board of both companies [2], do you think we are
seeing an example of this problem?

(In finance-ish words, the problem would be that Facebook is doing "empire
building". Usually the board is the defense against this, but if the directors
own large interests in the potential targets, that may not happen)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7430152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7430152)
[2] [http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/03/25/marc-
andrees...](http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/03/25/marc-andreessen-
got-us-all-excited-about-oculus-hours-before-facebook-deal/)

------
eigenvalue
This is a very smart move. The big tech houses now are basically just curators
of the next awesome technology. This is no different from Google buying Nest
or Deepmind or Boston Dynamics. Who cares if there is a direct link to their
current business? Also, imagine how much more they can do with all the
resources of Facebook at their disposal. This will surely accelerate the
adoption of next gen VR hardware.

~~~
onedev
wow finally someone who gets it

------
morganwilde
Oculus has been one of the most forward looking companies to hit the scene
recently. This acquisition shows that Mark is well able to look far into the
future. Personally, I find this as a very good sign, since we now have Google
and Facebook as two giants unafraid of taking the lead. The more, the better,
because it seemed for a time with Apple out of the game, it would be Google
alone at the forefront.

------
emperorcezar
The comments on here are starting to look like a Facebook post.

------
mllobet
Huge mistake from Oculus. They had the potential to become a multibillion
company and a true giant of the likes of facebook itself...

------
vicbrooker
I have a bit of a feeling that this will be a point that people in 20 years
will consider a turning point in the bubble that we're in now; it's too
premature to say whether this is good or bad though.

That said, I can't come up with a roadmap for FB and Oculus here that involves
the facebook.com and doesn't make me slightly uncomfortable...

------
marknutter
Everyone in this thread is being ridiculous. Since Facebook bought Parse the
service hasn't been tainted whatsoever. Facebook is just buying promising
businesses and startup because - gasp - hitting home runs is hard! You may
dislike Facebook the product but hating Facebook the company is short sided.

------
namuol
"One day I'd go out and buy all the pants in the world -- every pair of pants
-- and just... burn them. Fuck everybody. No more pants. Start over with
making pants."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO9PwbtlOIU#t=39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO9PwbtlOIU#t=39)

------
fotbr
Add another person that was formerly excited about Oculus and is now walking
away from it. Yes, I dislike facebook and their business practices enough that
I'll turn my back on a very promising bit of technology I was looking forward
to. I'm also looking into canceling my devkit2 pre-order.

------
eclipxe
Pissed about this? Just wait until MS buys Valve...

~~~
mavdi
I'll just shut down my computer and be a goat farmer if that happens.

~~~
jtokoph
You'll still need steam ;)

[http://www.goat-simulator.com/](http://www.goat-simulator.com/)

------
gkya
Wouldn't world be a better place if these huge, hungry companies did not
exist? Their greed makes the world a sadder place. Reckon me a zealot, but I
really wish Facebook and alike die out of the hunger that makes them the
greedy animals they are. Everything one might get excited about, gets sold to
a stupid trust, and die of lack of enthusiasm and nonchalance of those
companies. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, this, that and whatever. Just, why
would these companies not do their own business, but want to own all the
f..king world?

Albeit this comment is accompanied by many other similar ones in this thread,
I just could not keep myself from posting it.

------
Tloewald
This is a bit of a WTF.

I don't think Facebook would necessarily "ruin" Occulus (although it likely
will) but I don't really see the fit. Courtside seats at basketball games --
OK totally doable technically speaking, but the hard part would be licensing.

If VR ever takes off in the mainstream it will probably end up becoming a
"FRAND" kind of deal, where a bunch of key players pool their patents. Occulus
will be a player, but hardly the only player.

I could see Sony or Microsoft wanting to sew up Occulus (although I think it
would be a mistake to sell to either). Facebook just doesn't make much sense.
Maybe it's just Zuckerberg really likes the technology.

~~~
cweiss
Here's the thing, if FB really wanted to do the 'courtside seats' thing, they
should have licensed being able to stream the feeds through the FB web site -
In terms of revenue stream, they'd make a boatload more $$ off of charging for
that than they will by attaching it to a $1500 piece of headgear that you're
not going get away with slipping on in your office to sneak a quick game.

~~~
Tloewald
The point is that to stream video from an NBA game you need to license it (you
can't even carry pro photo gear into a professional sports venue without the
appropriate credentials, let alone hook it up to the internet and stream video
out of it). So this is totally pie-in-the-sky above and beyond the technical
side of it which is perfectly feasible with off-the-shelf stuff today (Occulus
would simply be a nicer HMD than most).

~~~
bripeace
The NBA has heard of Facebook. The NBA probably had not heard of Occulus. They
certainly have now. These are the kind of things that once the technology has
matured a bit the Facebook association will really help out with.

The idea that brands like NBA/MLB/NFL won't want to get in on selling people
VIP VR Experiences is crazy. VR is going to be absolutely huge, it's the next
truly disruptive technology.

------
dsrguru
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.

------
ama729
That acquisition just doesn't make any sense, even when reading facebook's
reasons:

\- Who are going to use the Oculus outside of gamers? Just selling a
smartwatch is already a tough sell for anyone but technologists, I just can't
imagine my dad or my mom putting on a VR headset or anyone not a hardcore
geek.

\- And even if they would (which is dubious) the move to mobile mean it's just
impossible technical wise for a long time (considering they said VR would
bring a high end PC to its knee quickly)

\- On top of that Facebook brings what? Money? They could already get that
with investors, having a lot of users doesn't bring that much to the table.

No really I don't understand.

------
sunseb
It's maybe irrational, but I don't trust Facebook and I certainly don't want
to use Oculus VR for my private life.

------
LeicaLatte
It is amazing how Sony has turned things around in the last 18 months. Mostly
because their competition (xbox, nintendo, oculus) is simply clueless about
treating a community well.

As for Oculus itself, I doubt they would have been funded in kickstarter if
they used any of these words in their original pitch - social, communicate,
Facebook, etc. Now it feels sad to see them speak a very different language.

Imagine if the iPhone, after being sold for 600$ to early adopters, sold out
to Microsoft in 2007. That's how bad this feels for some of us backers and
developers.

------
druidsbane
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo :'(

------
Oculus
Can someone please explain to me how you can just go on a spending spree and
spend $21 Billion in _under a month_ with no one going:

'Hey, umm guys, I _know_ we really like the company, but lets have things cool
down a bit after spend _19 billion_.'

In the Whatsapp acquisition thread someone made a comment about FB thinking
their stock valuation is overpriced. I'm curious to hear what the split
(cash/stock) is. If it's stock heavy, I'm almost certain that person was
right.

------
orware
Whatever brings us closer to the (hopefully not as dangerous) reality from
this book: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Deadliest-Game-Net-
Force/dp/042516...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Deadliest-Game-Net-
Force/dp/0425161749/)

I understand the frustration I'm seeing in a lot of the comments here, and I
don't know how things will play out (I was definitely surprised when I saw
this announcement just now), but let's hope that good things will come out of
it because Oculus has a good team and Facebook sees the possibilities such a
platform could bring to the world...eventually.

In the Matrix, I'm not quite sure if they ever showed whether or not time was
1:1 inside/out of the Matrix.

If it was, then it makes me think of all of the things that happen within our
dreams and how much we seem to be able to do within those sleeping hours.
Maybe in the future we'll figure out a way to go into a virtual world that
fully mimics the rules in the "real" world and be able to accomplish the same
amount of work in a fraction of the time because time will be slower (or our
ability to process information will be faster in this virtual world, however
you want to look at it) so we can spend part of the time in there and more
time out in the real world :-).

Anyhow, I'll try and be positive that Facebook will be able to do the right
thing here and be able to earn the trust again of those that currently
"creeped" out by the acquisition (plus, I sort of have to be anyway...I still
have quite a bit of IPO stock I purchased and been holding onto :-).

------
thinkofnothing
I distinctly remember Oculus's hiring page once touting "Help us build the
Metaverse!"

Then they turn around and blatantly disregard one of Stephenson's most
fundamental virtues/warnings from the novel (don't want to spoil it for
anyone, but yea, eerily similar to joining L. Bob Rife). Straight PR garbage.
And a slap to the face for anyone who actually believed them.

I can't remember the last piece of tech news that made me so disappointed.

------
martin_bech
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly
cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has
happened...

------
ivanca
That's it; Oculus is lost, we need some kind of non-profit working on virtual
reality instead of private ventures otherwise this shit is never going to
work.

------
jarjoura
What other acquisitions by Facebook resulted in that product falling apart?
Instagram is still doing its own thing, also Parse as well.

People need to get over whatever negative emotions they have towards Facebook.
It's like they hate Facebook for reminding them of a bad breakup.

Congratulations to entire Oculus team, that's an exciting acquisition and I
look forward to what this infusion of cash will do to the future of an already
incredible product.

------
rowdyrabbit
This is really disappointing. I've been thinking about buying the dev kit for
the last couple of weeks, I guess this news has made the decision for me :(

------
10098
Pretty sure they're going to ruin it

------
larkinrichards
I think what will be really interesting to see is how Valve will react to this
acquisition. Presumably, they've been hoping to make $$$ from selling Oculus
VR games via Steam.

With Facebook now owning Oculus they have the resources to completely
circumvent Steam and create their own game distribution platform and get a cut
of the sales-- they've already started down this path with the App Center.

------
cmdr2
I'm trying to calculate the valuation of Oculus VR. Obviously I don't know
anything about calculating valuation :)

They have 70 employees [1], funding of $91 million [2], headset sales of 50K
for DK1 [3] (although claims sales of 75K). Unknown IP, unknown partnership
deals, unknown real-estate cost, unknown inventory, molds, and hardware
assets.

I suspect that the valuation isn't entirely for their assets, but I cannot
arrive at the 2 billion number. Do my 'unknowns' listed above complete the 2
billion mark?

[1]
[http://www.oculusvr.com/company/people/](http://www.oculusvr.com/company/people/)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_VR](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_VR),
2.5m kickstarter + 75 series B + 13.5 m unknown [3]
[http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-rift-suspends-
shipme...](http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-rift-suspends-shipments-
due-to-component-shortage/1100-6417916/)

~~~
zzleeper
I'm also thinking of the same thing.. I doubt you can get at this number by
usual means since everything is about their growth potential

By the way, there is an alternative hypothesis, that the valuation is just not
there:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471471)

Do you think it makes sense?

------
cocoflunchy
I'm kind of speechless here... Certainly did not see this coming.

~~~
a1a
Nobody did. Well, besides this guy
[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/)

------
servowire
My prediction about further buys Facebook will do: 1) Mind control tech (like
those headsets that control Betawaves) 2) They will buy some big cloud-music
provider (Spotify maybe even) 3) They will buy Tesla 4) They will buy an OS
startup and rebrand to FaceOS-1 6) They buy something like Ripple for currency
tech.

Then they have all the stuff covered.

~~~
xbonez
I imagine the only way they acquire Tesla is over Elon's dead body.

~~~
otikik
I imagine Facebook can arrange that.

~~~
dwd
Facebook is starting to act like a Corporation. When you have $171b market
capitalisation you can expect some diversification in its corporate holdings.

Their big problem is that they perceived as the cashed up bogans of the
corporate world. Buying companies with tangible products or services is the
only way they will shake that perception.

------
farinasa
Oculus has had several competitors coming to prototype recently. Now they have
lost their following. I personally think facebook just bought a dud. Oculus
just dug their own grave.

Additionally, this is a gaming device. Having utopian visions for a device
that hasn't even hit the market for its intended use is not a good PR
strategy.

------
80
Honest, naive question -- what makes human data worth so much? Is it
speculation that it will be worth more in future that drives the feverish
collection of it, or are there already concrete uses/buyers? It feels bigger
and more urgent than to simply help brands sell their merchandise more
effectively

~~~
waps
Not really, it's having the ability to hack on human behavior, to make large
amounts of people do things. Buying things is the obvious example, but there
are other things (like giving X some attention, push a political cause,
convince them of something ...)

And yes, you're of course right that things like this wouldn't convince X.
That's not the point. The point is that 0.1% of facebook's audience is one
massive group of people.

------
mixedbit
Today Oculus is just a display and a controller (sending head movements to the
computer). I really, really hope it will stay this way. It would be so
unfortunate if Oculus became sophisticated, stand alone device with Facebook
controlling software stack on it. Display + controller is a way to go!

------
eswat
Sudden urge to read Snow Crash again. Reading this makes me feel like they
want to take the first step into making a Metaverse[1]. That way they can
control it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Metaverse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Metaverse)

------
venomsnake
I am really disappointed. Don't know why exactly, but it just doesn't feel
right. I have had really great hopes for the product.

Have you noticed that the giants work relentlessly to prevent any small player
of growing with golden handcuffs - thermostat guys, whatsapp, now OVR ...

------
w_t_payne
Damn, and I was just getting myself psyched to put an order in for the new
dev. kit ...

Well, I think I'm gonna hold off on that for a little while and see where this
story leads.

I don't really want an advertising company inserting itself as an intermediary
in the data-stream an inch in front of my eyes. (Yeah yeah, Android mutter
mutter mutter ... but at least that's a somewhat more open platform).

If FB make Oculus a hardware-only device, or, even better, an open platform,
then I'm probably gonna be cool with it. If, on the other hand, they lock it
down so that they can monitor and/or influence and/or control what appears in
front of my eyes, then I'm gonna be tempted to stay away from that particular
party.

~~~
w_t_payne
As a rule, I don't much like the Fascists from Cupertino, but right now
"iGoggles" seem like a rather better prospect...

------
tedkalaw
There's a live call right about this right now:

[http://www.shareholder.com/visitors/event/build3/stage/stage...](http://www.shareholder.com/visitors/event/build3/stage/stage.cfm?mediaid=63723&mediauserid=0)

------
charlesism
The most exciting consumer technology this year... DOA. On the bright side, I
hope Facebook continues this cluelessness and burns through the rest of their
bank roll buying decent companies.

With privacy being a huge issue, thanks to the NSA, and kids not wanting to
belong to the same social network as their parents... it's over. I think these
companies they're buying won't survive being tainted by their association with
FB.

I'm aware that 2 billion is a drop in the bucket, but I'm hoping Zuckerberg
goes on a buying spree, pisses through enough money purchasing, and eventually
trying to bail out, once decent companies, that it quickens the demise of the
company.

------
fasteddie31003
I'm not super thrilled by this but at least it's better than GM acquiring
Tesla.

------
cmdr2
me: mind, stop going down thought-threads about facebook empire building

mind: fu

me: okay, don't panic. facebook sees the potential in the upcoming VR industry

mind: yeah, they also see the VR marketplace wars coming and want to own it

me: marketplace wars? like apps built for VR accessible from within the
headset [1]?

mind: yeah, so (c)blocking Steam from exploiting valve's influence with
Oculus, and instead push Facebook as the marketplace for VR content

me: interesting.. mind?

mind: yeah?

me: you're just making up shit to explain why Facebook would buy Oculus VR
aren't you?

mind: yeah :(

[1] [http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5524336/new-oculus-rift-
dev...](http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5524336/new-oculus-rift-dev-kit-
price-july)

------
XorNot
The only sensible interpretation of this is that Facebook is looking at this
as a hail-mary diversification. They've got trouble monetizing and they know
it. Having an actual hardware wing, in something new that might be on the
verge of finally becoming big is a smart move.

Though if I had to fathom a plan, if Facebook buys some telepresence/robotics
people then I'd say they might be thinking about how you could monetize global
telepresence via virtual reality. Gaming is one app for the Oculus, but it's
got an unknown market dimension. Whereas something like that - you could sell
it to everyone, and they would actually pay for it.

------
lihorne
Well, after getting over the shock of this, it seems like a good move by
Facebook. Ever since I first heard about Oculus the majority of applications
that I'd seen people interested in were gaming alone. Based on Zuck's post it
looks like they aren't going to change that at all, and it will be the first
thing they ship with it, but they'll get a head start on turning it into a
social / communications platform.

People here seem shocked that it sold to Facebook, but really I think this
means that everything that was expected of it will still happen, but even more
interesting things will be done with it at the same time.

------
calcsam
"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die" \-- Cersei Lannister

------
thom
Gaming is - at its best - a social thing, so this makes _some_ sense. But it
only makes sense to me execution-wise if Facebook is lining up an acquisition
of someone like Unity, or even (gulp) Valve, to bootstrap an ecosystem.

------
Tiktaalik
I have no idea why Oculus would sell at this point. It feels to me like this
is just the beginning of their story and of this technology. Did they just get
scared about Sony's Project Morpheus and decide to get out early?

~~~
dragonwriter
> I have no idea why Oculus would sell at this point.

Money?

> It feels to me like this is just the beginning of their story and of this
> technology.

That's probably the point, for any technology firm, where the "work done" to
"money received" for selling out is the highest.

When it feels like the _end_ of their story and technology, they've missed the
ideal time to sell.

------
kkarakk
Device comes into market. Gets played around with by devs and early adopters
creating hype. Device dies from lack of support/apps that do anything useful.

Device comes into market. Gets played around with by devs and early adopters
creating hype. Device gets bought by a company with a proven track record of
stable up-time with immense amounts of data(that is constantly being updated
and replicated) about real-world objects and the cash to implement interesting
use cases.

Not saying it's gonna happen but i'm cautiously optimistic. A connected social
experience is the future. I'm just hoping for AR instead of VR.

------
nhm
More details at [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/facebook-to-
acquire-...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/facebook-to-acquire-
oculus-252328061.html)

"... for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in
cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion
based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21,
2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300
million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain
milestones."

------
midolzzzz
This is a big step in the direction of data collection. Imagine gaming with
the goggles on and FB is tracking your eye movement, monitoring your heart
rate and how you react to certain visuals. Say you are playing DeadSpace or
some other jumpy game and they see that when you get "scared" your heart beat
becomes abnormal. They could then use that data to insert an ad for a local
heart specialist or some fancy new heart medication. I'm not against new tech
but people should always be informed on what data is being collected and most
of the time that is not the case.

------
buro9
Once you build the immersive virtual reality where we can live, think of the
opportunity for the outdoor and indoor advertising that follows.

An infinite landscape, where every advert is 100% tailored to the person
viewing it.

Yeah, I hate it too.

------
serge2k
Cancelling order now.

~~~
sekasi
well that's a lie.

------
troymc
What next? "Ebay acquires Skype"?

~~~
barnabask
Actually, this is the glimmer of hope. eBay bought Skype in 2007 for $2.5
billion hoping for "synergy". It left a lot of people scratching their heads.
When they sold Skype to MSFT for $8.5 billion 5 years later then it didn't
seem like such a bad idea. It didn't ruin Skype. Hopefully Facebook will hold
on to their new plaything for a while, then sell it off.

Question is: will we like the next buyer more? Does it even matter?

------
wzy
I have just glanced over the comments on the FB post, am i the only one who is
amazed at the "thumbs up" comments and general elation by the 45,000+ people
liking the 'news' ?

~~~
nailer
It's Facebook.

Every 'like' is probably someone who:

\- likes Oculus Rift

\- likes Sony VR

\- likes Google Glass

\- likes 'I hate VR'

\- likes 'luddites'

\- and likes 'Lawnmower man'

------
sgy
According to sources close to the situation, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg started his quest to buy Oculus VR, the maker of the nifty Rift
virtual reality headset, several months ago, before wrapping up the deal this
past weekend. It was signed this morning.

[http://recode.net/2014/03/25/in-googles-shadow-facebooks-
zuc...](http://recode.net/2014/03/25/in-googles-shadow-facebooks-zuckerberg-
pursued-oculus-over-several-months-ending-in-weekend-marathon-of-dealmaking/)

------
sohailk
Smart move by FB, honestly. I think its safe to say that VR will be a large
part of the way we consume content in a couple years. Acquiring Occulus puts
them ahead of the competition...for now.

------
pavanky
I don't understand facebook hate. While it is a bad platform in its current
state (for me) because of all the noise, it is also a great platform for many
people to stay connected.

Their engineering team also seems to deliver some great solutions and plays
well with OSS community.

As for this deal, I do not understand how they are going to integrate it into
their platform or even what they are going to do with Oculus. I would like to
think it is a long term diversification strategy because they feel they have
great technology.

------
sandycheeks
Are these types of purchases primarily defensive in order to prevent new
social networks from appearing that are simpler, more private or somehow more
appealing?

I always thought it was inevitable that a solution will eventually evolve that
allows individuals to communicate directly with each other and manage their
own online social networks without intermediaries like Google or Facebook.
Slowing down that evolution seems like a correct strategy for companies that
stand to lose from it.

------
Elof
Facebook is obviously making calculated grabs for data, I get it. But the
premiums they are paying seem Ludacris and I don't think spending this much on
relatively easily replicated tech seems worth it. I'm going to guess that they
are going to ruin the brands that these companies have created and there are
probably already legitimate opportunities for incumbent companies or not-even-
built-yet future companies to displace the things they are buying.

------
tucif
This seems odd to me, but after some thought I think they could become
something like Second Life, powered by VR.

Otherwise I don't see how facebook could take advantage of the device.

------
prawn
From mid-2013 after Series A investment:

'Also, the plan is still to stay an independent company... not sell to a big
fish like Sony, the way Iribe's former employer Gaikai did last June. "We want
to stay independent and get to the consumer market, realizing VR the way we
really think it needs to be done, and we don't need to take any shortcuts to
get there," declares Iribe, adding that his new venture capital bosses are on
board with that.'

~~~
chad_c
I'm not sure what your source is, but I did find a similar statement from
Iribe:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/17/4439608/oculus-series-a-
fu...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/17/4439608/oculus-series-a-
funding-15-million)

------
Springtime
HN needs a better system to deal with a flood of comments for such articles.
Currently it's pretty borked for so many comments.

Simply having the most upvoted comment in the short-term leads to the effect
of other, possibly more relevant and current comments being lost beneath the
ever upvote-collecting top comments.

It works well for up to 150 comments, but at close to 700 comments in such a
system the conversation and HN user input becomes vastly less effective (and
navigable).

------
dsaravel
I wonder what is the development approach from both companies. For example, I
remember Steve Jobs saying Apple's approach was to start from what they wanted
to provide to the user rather than developing a technology and then figure out
how to make a product out of it.

From the statement from Oculus VR, they are not clear what experiences they
really want to provide.

Right now it is very difficult to see what is this same vision that both
companies claim to have.

------
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.

------
dewarrn1
No part of this acquisition makes sense. I just hope that the product doesn't
disappear without a trace after a write-down in a couple of years.

~~~
efiftythree
Trying to make sense of it in my head I can see where Oculus brings the VR
technology Facebook may bring the data to create virtual worlds? Surely they
will operate as separate entities like Instagram and/or WhatsApp. It also may
be good to have a solid financial backer who is also a company who moves
quickly.

So long as the device doesn't turn bright blue and Facebook doesn't hinder the
forward progress of Oculus VR we might as well sit back and hope for the best.

------
c0ur7n3y
This sucks so unbelievably bad.

------
martijn_himself
Whilst I'm exciting by the technology I can't help being cynical and wonder if
this is going to further 'devalue' the traditional meaning of the word
'social', i.e. engaging with actual people.

It's hard enough trying to meet with someone who is constantly distracted by
their smart phone; does this mean in order to interact with someone I need to
meet with their virtual persona?

------
mbrzuzy
I'm worried this will turn from a gaming oriented device to a general device.
A device with a library of apps that require a facebook account to login and
use and if you don't pay for some sort of paid version of an app have to deal
with ads.

As soon as sony released information about their VR headset I was looking
forward more to that one since it will be oriented around gaming.

------
trekky1700
Luckily, the tech exists and the market is proven such that if Facebook fucks
this up, someone else will come in and replace them.

If Facebook stays hands off and just infuses them with billions of dollars and
massive resources, we could see something amazing come out of this. I'm still
cheering for Oculus, and I trust the team and John Carmack to create an
awesome product, regardless.

------
zenbowman
I think a lot of people who are filled with negativity just don't understand
how hard it is to make VR happen. I was part of a USC/ISI spinoff
(www.alelo.com) that built educational mixed reality systems, and the reality
is that to make it happen you need a ton of money, way more than we could ever
acquire.

Seems like they've passed that hurdle, I wish them the best of luck!

------
habosa
i HOPE this just gives Oculus more money, engineering talent, and breathing
room to make the great product that Carmack and co. are dreaming of.

I fear that something will go wrong and this will change the trajectory for
the worse. I don't see the fit here. However there are a lot of smart people
on both sides of the deal and I like to assume that they know what they are
doing.

------
bsaul
Based on all the comments everywhere, i believe the only thing that can save
this project now is an official communication from John Carmack to reassure
everyone that he received all the guarantees that the project will remain
independent from every bad direction FB may want to push it into.

He's the only one that can't be suspected of doing that for the money at this
point.

------
pirateking
And just like that, my company and I are done with the Oculus platform before
we could really get going. New Dev Kit orders cancelled.

------
jamesjguthrie
Nah, I like the sound of it. It's like, suddenly all the potential that Oculus
Rift had is going to be become (virtual) reality.

------
Kiro
> Very little changes day-to-day at Oculus, although we’ll have substantially
> more resources to build the right team.

I think this is a good thing.

~~~
1ris
Maybe. I doubt facebook will be satisfied if they sell their Oculi (What's the
plural?) like lg sells their monitors. I'm sure they sell it like samsung
sells their phones: Full of stuff i do not want, deeply integrated into a
ecosystem that i do distrust.

------
sytelus
Why Oculus _had_ to sell out? I can't imagine them running out of capital. In
current bubble market they should have VCs lined up outside their office if
they wanted. I'm unable to think any other reason then plain old cashing out.
Did FB used some backdoor to snap them or they actually willingly submitted
themselves to cash out?

------
kreeben
The question of why.

Well, Facebook lost their teens and they need them back. Zuck might have
looked into the future were he envisioned millions of gamers using oculus rift
and what he actually bought were those future (facebook) users, who will whine
because the facebook account is mandatory but who will still use it because
there is nothing like it.

------
computerslol
Farmville 2: The ultimate farming experience.

------
clvrly
I don't like this. I don't trust facebook and they seem to acquiring many of
the promising companies out there.

------
rch
It's fine if Facebook wants to compete with the PlayStation and XBox, but this
does force me to temper my excitement for for the Oculus platform until I see
the final devkit terms and costs. Maybe things will be open, or maybe FB wants
to roll their own Steam network. The latter certainly wouldn't surprise me.

------
lsh
I've just demanded my order for the DK2 cancelled and to be refunded. I
cannot, in good conscience, fund Facebook.

------
prawn
I wonder if Oculus felt threatened enough by Valve and Sony to jump at any
solid opportunity to aggressively ramp up their development, hiring and so on?

Sony has the brand name and Valve have a pretty solid community. If either
were out there with as-strong or superior technology, Oculus might've been
irrelevant within 2-3 years.

~~~
torbit
agree, especially if none of the technology could be patented. I'm assuming it
can't be patented, since there has been previous attempts in VR & Sony is
working on their own.

------
heifetz
wow..who's going to use oculus now..???

~~~
LoganCale
I was. I won't now.

------
dylanrw
If you've used oculus you learned that it's probably the most anti-social
thing (at least to those in the room with you). So the "Social company
acquires Anti-social product" dichotomy is humorous to me right now (yeah I
know it's short sighted, it's just what popped into my head)...

~~~
jfoster
Facebook is also faux-social. Seeing pictures of your friends checking into
places and doing stuff is very different from being there, doing stuff with
them.

Multiplayer games were one of the first faux-social online activities. In a
weird way, it feels like a good fit to me if Facebook is in this to create an
online gaming platform.

------
thinkersilver
I commented on impusle. I'm going to be echoing the sentiment here. I was
seconds away from buying the development kit when I heard the news. It's with
a heavy sigh that I contemplate this news. I may just buy the devkit, get
comfortable with the platform and then switch once the market has caught up.

------
servowire
So Facebook is buying every tech available? AI tech, Drone tech, VR tech -
uhoh, are they going to build the Matrix?

~~~
yankoff
What.. they also bought something from Drone tech?

------
andy_ppp
Never has a tech company been so hated and untrusted so early in it's
existence.

Could we not create a human readable social network using email as the
protocol. That way everyone's email client slowly starts to integrate social
features and everyone not interested in these gets summary mails that they can
just bin.

Just a thought.

------
orky56
My gut reaction is that Facebook wants to create the VR platform and
infrastructure that will enable applications like wearables/3d printing/etc.
Google Glass takes the existing world and contextualizes it with the necessary
info. FB approach might be to take the same approach to the VR world.

------
gcb0
I loath valve because it made drm and always online cool.

But this is worse. Will we have farmvilleVR only now? Either way, they're now
in position to make further drm on oculus games, such as Facebook login only.

But seeing that Sony added a share button on their controller this is probably
the inevitable future anyway...

------
ebspelman
Google Glass shows you an augmented view of reality. Facebook Glass shows you
a reflected vision of yourself.

------
Hominem
Despite my dislike of facebook I think this may have been a smart play.
Valve's largely vaporous VR tech was gaining mindshare and Sony has cash,
manufacturing, retail presence, the list goes on and on. Without a huge
bankroll Oculus may have ended just another piece of tech trivia.

------
tjmc
Gutted. Oculus just turned into Orwell's telescreen. Hope the board enjoy
their 30 pieces of silver.

------
BoppreH
> consulting with a doctor face-to-face

Isn't that physically impossible with current technology? To use the set you
have to cover the upper part of your face with the screens, so there's no way
to record your whole facial expression.

It feels like this is going to be a disappointment to all involved.

------
joeblau
This is an interesting view from an investment perspective. The Internet
basically bootstrapped Oculus VR via Kickstarter and the result is that the
founders get a huge payout while the real risk takers in the product get an
Oculus VR or whatever their Kickstarter reward was.

~~~
damian2000
I get what you mean, but individually, someone paying $10 or even $300 isn't
really taking a huge risk. Taking all the funders as a single entity though,
yes you're right. Could this mean that Kickstarter may now be forced to sell
shares in the company, taking the combined funders control to say 51% and the
founders the rest? This would prevent something like this from happening
again.

------
fmax30
NOOO. It makes me genuinely sad. Oculus has the potential to be a giant. Now
it will be limited by what facebook has to offer. Also i am not a really a fan
of acquisitions because the parent/acquiring company has a habit of shutting
down these smaller companies :(.

------
dombili
Carmack now works for Facebook? Damn.

------
nercury
I don't usually swear, but fuck this shit. I was following Oculus VR
development and now it goes to my ignore list. It is no longer cool. Yes, just
because it has "Facebook" name attached to it. It is now Facebook VR, which
sounds like a nightmare.

------
jobu
Facebook has made some good purchases that align with their overall strategy,
but I definitely don't see how this fits. And why would Oculus sell to them?!
It makes no sense. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony... The list of better
technology matches is huge.

------
mpg33
I feel like idealism is Silicon Valley's greatest asset...and it's greatest
liability.

------
Pxtl
That's...odd. There doesn't seem to be much synergy there, unless oculus us
going to be used to power a facebook-branded answer to Glass. Maybe remote
meeting? I guess if Facebook wants to develop some kind of metaversy thing it
would make sense...

------
orng
Sad news. I guess facebook is going to take the Oculus "store" (or "share" or
whatever they call it) and try and get the facebook App Center to be the new
Steam for VR games or something. Whatever they do I just know I want no part
in it.

------
pera
Is there any way to stop this? Can we start a petition in change.org or
something like that? :(

------
ebbv
I share the general feeling of disappointment about this. I was previously
planning on ordering one of the new Oculus dev kits and excited about its
possibilities. Now I want to avoid Oculus.

The good news for Sony is this makes their VR suddenly the best hope for
gaming.

------
iamshariq
Looks like Oculus VR is going to be the next big platform for developers to
make software for.

------
balls187
I was super excited for the Rift.

Now, I'm torn.

As a tech company, and a social platform, I like Facebook, _a lot._

As a gamer, I do not want my gaming tech force integrated into my social
network. Not sure that's in their roadmap, or what that would even look like,
but there is that risk.

------
Crito
This is disappointing to me, I now have lower hopes for the future of the
Oculus Rift, particularly as hacker accessible hardware.

My only hope is that John Carmack is coming out of this well enough to bring
Armadillo Aerospace back out of 'hibernation mode'.

------
benmorris
Well I went from bring really excited to own an oculus one day to not being
real sure if I'll ever buy one. I just don't think facebook is the right
company to be behind the his device. Really interested to hear what Carmack
has to say.

------
pbiggar
Looks like Facebook is preparing for the next battle. Google's got Glass and
Nest, Facebook has Oculus, and Twitter, Apple and Microsoft have nothing
announced yet.

Assuming that this is the reason, that's a shockingly strong and forward
looking move.

~~~
WalterSear
Glass is part of the battle. Oculus is a different war entirely.

------
axx
I'm so disappointed, and it feels a little like Oculus sold their early
investors (including Kickstarter folks) to Facebook.

I mean, in the end it's theis (Oculus) decision what to do with their company,
but i don't think Facebook is a good fit.

------
microjesus
I've heard so much hypocritical anti-facebook on this ... from people ...
using facebook. I don't use facebook, and I despise it; and it's takeover, so
I agree. But please, only bash facebook if you aren't using it.

------
tomphoolery
Can't wait for "Oculus Chafe", their upcoming virtual reality codpiece.

------
51Cards
IMO Facebook just bought $2 Million of R&D and a whole lot of bad PR for 1000x
the going price. Doesn't seem like such a hot deal.

Also I'm wondering what the investors do to FB's stock watching them throw
cash away like this.

------
swalsh
Yahoo turned down a deal with Google when the company was still young. But if
you imagine, what would happen if the deal went through? Would self driving
cars, and glass be a thing today?

I think a world of possibilities just got thrown away.

------
javiercr
From Zuckerber's post:

    
    
      > Imagine [..] studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world
    

I think his mention to Education is quite relevant here. Days for traditional
Education are numbered.

~~~
drakaal
<Not sarcastic> Do you feel that distance learning is limited by the fact that
it is in 2d instead of 3d? is the ability to see the teacher in stereocopic
presentation hampering? </not sarcastic>

~~~
javiercr
IMHO, what matters most is not if the VR actually helps learning, but that a
company such Facebook is putting a spotlight on Education. Zuckerberg could
have mentioned a hundred different things where VR would be applicable.

The press release [1] from Oculus also mentions Education:

    
    
       Mark and his team share our vision for virtual reality’s
       potential to transform the way we learn, share, play, and
       communicate
    

[1] [http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-
facebook/](http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-facebook/)

~~~
zenbowman
Play. Learn. Communicate.

That was and still is the slogan of my previous employer.
[http://alelo.com/](http://alelo.com/)

I'd love to see this really take shape, I worked on the virtual education
problem for a long time, and it badly needs an investment of money. If
facebook invests in virtual education, I will be very pleased.

------
Illniyar
Maybe it's just me, but if someone had told me that a VR company is bought by
facebook, I'd say it was an acquhire for an augmented reality appliance to
compete with google-glass .

I don't buy into PR announcements.

------
ps4fanboy
It amazes me how negative people are acting, this is a very logical move by
OculusVR with Sony announcing a product competition is going to be fierce in
this space. Now they have just as many resources as Sony.

------
mark12
[http://thegamingpc.webs.com/apps/blog/show/42000077-3-blunde...](http://thegamingpc.webs.com/apps/blog/show/42000077-3-blunders-
facebook-has-committed-)

------
JoshTriplett
Meanwhile, CastAR is alive and well, and still looking like a better product.

~~~
DonGateley
The CastAR remains augmented reality, not virtual reality. They've said there
is a VR attachment but it has yet to be seen and given their projective
technology seems a pretty nasty optical folding trick if it can be done at
all.

------
addisonj
The argument for Oculus to push forward and usher in new forms of
communication certainly isn't new, but with a company like Facebook behind it
definitely legitimizes it...

And also makes it suddenly incredibly scary...

------
maxden
How much of this is a symptom of VC funding?

They stand to make lots of money getting in early and selling to Facebook.

Bit of a poisoned chalice from our perspective, but is this something the VC
would have been working towards since day 1?

------
malandrew
I really want to see a comment from Oculus stating that this acquisition came
with legal guarantees that the platform will remain open. If Oculus ends up
only working with a Facebook login, we all lose. :(

------
Demiurge
This is so disappointing! :(

------
jordanthoms
It's April 1st already?

------
qq66
I don't understand this.

I sure hope that this is because I lack the information, insight, or
imagination to understand what's going on here, and not because this is a
terrible outcome for Oculus technology.

------
sunseb
Reading the comments, it's truly shocking how FB isn't the cool kid anymore.

And I see this trend more and more with my friends (average users who just
leave FB or are inactive.)

Do you share this feeling regarding FB ?

------
laureny
Can't say I'm excited about this. I can't see a single positive thing coming
out from a non gaming company buying a game focused company (and an extremely
promising one at that).

~~~
froo
> I can't see a single positive thing coming out from a non gaming company
> buying a game focused company (and an extremely promising one at that).

You mean like Microsoft acquiring Bungie in 2000? Gaming (at the time) wasn't
one of Microsofts core competencies.

~~~
mrtschndr
This is a good example except that Halo sucks. Its popular, but weak.

~~~
froo
Back in the day it was a very promising game.

I distinctly remember sitting in a computer lab at Uni watching the dev demo
for Halo on a Mac and daydreaming about buying one, specifically to play this
game in 1999-ish

------
higherpurpose
Terrible decision. I thought they "weren't in this for the money", and it's
not like they were lacking money or relationships or hype. Why the hell did
they agree to this?

------
asadlionpk
This just doesn't sound right. They should have looked good with Valve.
Facebook is just trying to not-die and acquiring whatever they are getting
there hands on while they have money.

------
shultays
I don't know how this kickstarter works, I know I should accept it as a
charity but people donate money to this project and then they just sell it
without even delivering a project?

------
ldayley
Important to remember that this was initially funded via Kickstarter.

~~~
Pyrodogg
And also how you don't even get the tiniest little sliver of equity for that
early proof of concept funding....

------
MrZongle2
Dammit!

This is like the Google acquisition of Nest: something cool, now owned by a
large company historically more interested in monetizing my activities than
providing _me_ with a quality product.

------
nichochar
This is really upsetting.

------
ecthiender
I opened HN after a long day today and I see this news. Sigh.

Now I wish I open HN tomorrow and see a post, maybe something like - "John
Carmack quits Oculus and starts his own VR company".

------
tibbydude
They are going to use VR to build the next Like button. I don't get Facebook
.. they are buying everything these days that is not nailed down ... they are
the Ebay of Web 3.0

------
Ryel
Let FB pump all the money into VR they want. In 5 years we'll have the company
that Oculus was supposed to be, and FB will have already cleared the land and
paved the roads.

~~~
sharpneli
Except it's going to be patented to kingdom come. No small company can enter
the scene for several decades.

So in the end we are going to have just Facebook Rift with forced social media
integration and a gimmick for only PS4 games.

------
simonw
"A few months ago, Mark, Chris, and Cory from the Facebook team came down to
visit our office..."

Anyone know if that Cory is Cory Ondrejka, previously CTO of Linden Lab
(Second Life)?

------
clmorg01
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One)

Brought to you by Facebook.

Just wait till you see the new Farmville.

------
kudu
I don't understand all the hate towards Facebook. If this was Google, we would
all be bending down to thank the Holy Non-Evil Tech Company for its gracious
acquisition.

~~~
EpicEng
You sure about that?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7053239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7053239)

------
mindstab
I read it as facebook wanting to leapfrog google hangouts and skype and become
the first next gen video chat client/platform. Games is now a side secondary
thing.

------
volune
More money than brains.

------
joeevans
I am so very glad I didn't buy the dev kit, which I was just about to do last
month.

The kit would have gone from being a shiny cool thing on my desk to a shiny
turd in my room.

------
jpeg_hero
One gets the sense that FB has the market capitalization capability (and
inclination?) to buy a large fraction of the remaining "independent" tech
sector.

------
tinalumfoil
I really hope Facebook has plans for VR besides mobile gaming. I don't want to
see a technology that could really help high-end gaming just be used on
phones.

------
sheldor
Carmack tweeted :

"I suppose I will get a FB account now, so that may lead to some writing a
little longer than tweet length..."

I guess he wasn't a great fan of facebook either.

------
catfoods
Well, not the best news.

Valve has a strong prototype, so they're also in the game, and they will take
this technology in the right direction if Oculus drops the ball.

------
RoboTeddy
I suspect Facebook's acquisition will cause VR to happen sooner. Other
companies will build or double down on VR tech, if they haven't already.

------
ericraio
Looks like I am buying a "Project Morpheus" :)

------
achy
Facebook could make this a promotional win by refunding anyone who funded the
dev kit a certain amount of money (down to the material cost for ex.)

------
whyrusleeping
I don't really feel like playing some vr game and then turning around to be
confronted by an ad tailored to the quest I just finished.

------
avenger123
Wow. What an unexpected buy. It's not even Aprils Fool's yet.

This is likely a defensive buy. I would imagine it didn't cost too much
either.

------
secondhandvape
In a world where WhatsApp costs more than a small country, $2B seems kinda low
for the potential next hottest thing in virtual reality.

------
martin1b
whoa. didn't see this coming. Doesn't really fit Carmack's style at all.
Wonder if this deal was done over him...

------
jpeg_hero
pretty bald plan to copy google's "expansive mandate" where you give your
company a broader mission and add on these non-core schemes. feels a little
hollow.

also, is all company sellers going to completely inflate their price to FB? I
get what Oculus is doing, but damn, i would guess that the second highest
bidder would pay 10% of that much.

------
Faryar
As a backer (investor) of Oculus VR, I am looking forward to my share of the
pie. Oh wait... my stake is 0%! No pie for me!

------
outside1234
This + the Nest acquisition by Google feel like some sort of weird VC payback
scheme. Its the only way I can explain them.

------
otikik
My hopes now rely on the Chinese copycats. I hope they are able to duplicate
an Occulus without Facebook when it comes out.

------
mhartl
Oof. My gut feeling is... this feels like a punch to the gut. (I hope my gut
is wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it.)

------
jsutton
Hang out with your Facebook friends via Oculus Rift? Seems like this will come
to fruition faster than we thought.

------
evanm
[http://i.imgur.com/v841Qjy.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/v841Qjy.jpg)

------
misterbwong
Wow. Didn't see that one coming. Hopefully this will speed the release of the
commercial Oculus VR

------
sbt
[http://i.imgur.com/OpFcp.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/OpFcp.jpg)

------
goombastic
I think kickstarter pitches will now need a "I will not sell this off to
facebook" clause.

------
option_greek
I suppose Facebook can now be officially declared as a hedge fund in the
disguise of a tech company.

------
dshep
Is this like an early April 1st joke?

------
JabavuAdams
For fuck's sake will you FB hating fanboys stop crying for a moment and
realize that this is what makes VR legit. This. Is. An. Enormous. Opportunity.

It's like the moment when I was teaching a game design course and I realized
that all the students already used Dropbox. I though I was the only one who
knew about Dropbox.

If you want VR, then you should be happy. This just made VR real.

~~~
angularly
So only now that FB is on board it is real? Sony, Valve, Microsoft and god
knows what other big companies, who were working hard on VR, wasn't real?

I think everyone are pissed off, because they were rooting for the first mover
and underdog that Oculus was.

~~~
JabavuAdams
>So only now that FB is on board it is real? Sony, Valve, Microsoft and god
knows what other big companies, who were working hard on VR, wasn't real?

In a word, yes. Why? Because tech innovation is different from social change.

As of GDC 2013, it was obvious to early adopters that VR was closer than had
been believed, and that there was a realistic road-map to getting there thanks
to Oculus and Valve. However, there was no way to know whether mass market
adoption would happen because the Rift DK1 still made lots of people nauseous,
and non VR-o-philes could legitimately claim that it was just a bunch of dorks
with ugly boxes on their heads. I mean, how pathetic is that? It could be
mocked in the same way that the Segway was mocked, but that the Z-Board is
not. Segway == loser dork. Z-Board == cool(ish). To be fair, I have a Rift
DK1, and it's a great first step -- much better than any consumer level VR
device I've seen in the last 15 years.

I didn't go to GDC 2014 last week, but this was also a huge tipping point. Two
of my co-workers who had been debilitated by DK1 nausea just bought DK2's on
the spot. That points to Oculus having removed a big obstacle to adoption.
People aren't going to adopt something that makes them barf.

Sony has been working on headsets for over a decade, but has failed to deliver
on the promise of VR until just now -- after being goaded by Oculus. So, yeah,
competition's good, but these guys failed and failed in part because the world
still wasn't ready for VR and they didn't want to commit the resources to
this.

This move by Facebook signals that the world _is_ or will soon be ready for
VR. People who don't "get" VR will be like people who don't see the benefit in
texting. Entitled to their opinion, but a diminishing fringe.

VR is poised to cross the chasm.

------
dkersten
And suddenly all my interest in Oculus VR has vanished. What a pity, I had
high hopes for them :(

------
Jack000
this probably doesn't bode well for core gamers. At least sony is planning on
a competitor.

------
jv22222
Wish it was anyone but Facebook. I can't rationally explain why, it's just a
feeling.

------
stesch
"Camera in the living room? Nice idea. We should buy this company!" – Facebook

------
OWaz
Is there any record of Facebook acquiring and then completely destroying a
product?

------
kbar13
Well I guess that's a GG?

------
briantakita
I hope someone makes a top-notch open source/open hardware VR platform.

------
locusm
Double checking its not April 1... Really wonder what vision FB sold them.

~~~
theorique
_vision_

I see what you did there.

------
it_learnses
I'm so disappointed...

------
letstryagain
Fuck :(

------
grannyg00se
Holy shit, John Carmack works for Facebook. I can't believe this.

------
debacle
You guys need to relax a little bit. Have a little faith in Carmack.

~~~
digitalzombie
I had faith in Will Wright and Spore.

You know what happen? EA happened.

~~~
debacle
No, see, there's you're problem. History has proven that Will Wright always
underdelivers on anything he hypes up. The guy that designs The Sims is not
going to design a realistic evolution simulator.

------
clef
Has anyone seen the movie "surrogates" with Bruce Willis?

------
z3phyr
Carmack, don't go to facebook. You are more suitable outside!

------
practicalpants
Yup, no way I'm buying Oculus Rift now, or developing for it.

------
izzydata
Worst news I've heard all year. I am extremely disappointed.

------
ulam2
I think i'd pass on this one... Nothing to do here anymore.

------
rando289
They should send back the 50k in $10 donations from kickstarter.

------
falconfunction
I guess the youporn with facebook likes finally makes sense now

------
xsquare
Clearly, Facebook starts diversification of it's capital.

------
tsbardella2
my son said it sounds more like a drug than a piece of technology I think this
is for "whales" people who have lots of money and time to spend on games.

------
MisterMashable
the Oculus Facebook song...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRL1yb9nAko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRL1yb9nAko)

------
ulam2
So i guess i'll have to learn to play farmville now...

------
erikj
Are they just acquiring every startup that shows up in news?

------
ap22213
It's like Zuckerburg read "Ready Player One"

------
jerryhuang100
i thought mark's shopping spree stopped at whatsapp...

------
bckrasnow
"I'm done for a while" my ass.

This is really really smart. I'd guess it's a play for a talented team, and a
bet that they can become a leader in an industry that will be revolutionary
sooner rather than later.

------
schmatz
I hope this doesn't kill the Rift's potential.

------
zobzu
well, fuck.

------
eranation
A week too soon. Oh how I wish it was April 1st.

------
72deluxe
Farmville in 3D! Real horses! Real poop! In 3D!

------
igl
Lobby carmack to push open source on this one.

------
spiritplumber
What does facebook have to do with Oculus?

------
sgy
We're taking virtual vacations soon.

------
rglover
Boo. Hiss. Boo.

------
ececconi
Facebook is really expanding everywhere.

------
SteroidsLove
Sony won before even fighting a battle.

------
goshx
Facebook to become the new Second Life?

------
zan2434
Oculus needs money. Facebook has money.

~~~
clef
And They keep taking ours no matter what :)

------
jtms
uggghhh i am so sad right now... facebook is absolutely the wrong place for
this to have gone!!!!

------
pdeva1
no more carmack pouring his passion. it will be left to 'product managers' in
facebook.

------
saltyknuckles
FUCKING FACEBOOK. WHY THE FUCK?

------
bane
Well...that's unfortunate.

------
btbuildem
Well, here comes the Matrix..

------
orasis
WTF

------
sriram_sun
One week too early!

------
steeve
What the? Whaaaat?

------
tonycoco
Ready Player One.

------
maaku
What. the. fuck.

------
keepsmiling
boycott oculus vrfor joining facebook.

------
83457
April Fools?

------
thinkersilver
Aaargh!

------
jsilence
Sucks.

------
lcasela
RIP

------
nighthawk24
:(

------
guidefreitas
huge WTF!

------
richard_cubano
Welcome to the bubble.

------
cruig
wtf...^2

------
lowglow
what.

------
benched
Is this the real Hacker News, or am I being spoofed?

Well, obviously I'm as disappointed as everybody else, but at least there is
still Valve's research? Perhaps that could be productized for games in a
couple of years.

------
teemo_cute
Disregarding whether you like Facebook or not. What we should watch out for is
the it decline. Friendster --> Myspace --> Facebook --> ???

What would happen happen to Oculus then? By then I hope it gets bought by
Microsoft or Valve.

------
notastartup
Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

I wanted Oculus VR to stay independent. Now all our VR habits and our minds
will be read by the NSA.

    
    
        "I'm gonna make him an offer he won't refuse"
        - Don Corleone

------
teemo_cute
Guys I know this ain't a troll or fun site, but you should see this (related
to post):

[http://9gag.com/gag/a75AdZA?ref=fbp](http://9gag.com/gag/a75AdZA?ref=fbp)

------
superduper33
Couldn't turn down $2 billion :)

~~~
adamnemecek
Are you guessing the price or did you read it somewhere?

~~~
nhm
"... for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in
cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion
based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21,
2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300
million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain
milestones."

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/facebook-to-
acquire-...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/facebook-to-acquire-
oculus-252328061.html)

------
happyscrappy
Got mine. I'm out.

------
kimonos
Don't like!

------
dmead
this is dumb.

