
Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook - Golddisk
http://thesurge.net/oculus-said-they-didnt-expect-such-negative-reactions-to-facebook-buying-them/
======
jader201
_> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive._

 _> If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re
going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are._

The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and
thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with
Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general -- should have
nothing to do with Oculus' vision.

Gamers cared about Oculus and Rift because they felt Oculus was innovating in
the interest of gaming as a whole. But being bought out by Facebook makes it
seem that Oculus is "selling out" to someone that is historically more
interested in monopolizing innovation than they are in gaming, or at least the
type of gaming that Oculus was originally innovating towards.

It's hard for many to see anything under the umbrella of Facebook doing a
service to gaming -- look at the direction social gaming has taken us.

This is how I see it, in my admittedly limited view, anyway. And since the
views of those "beyond their core community" are likely similarly limited, it
makes sense that others may have a similar reaction.

So I'm baffled how Oculus is surprised by the reaction.

~~~
wiremine
> The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and
> thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with
> Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general -- should
> have nothing to do with Oculus' vision.

Honest question: why shouldn't VR be in Facebook's vision?

_Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates
VR. I'm not excited that it is FB, per say, but I can see how a company built
on social interactions is going to want a piece of that pie.

I get the frustration about the short-term impact on gaming, but I don't
(yet?) understand why this is a bad move for VR in general...

~~~
teacup50
> __Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that
> incorporates VR._

Are they? Why is VR inevitable?

We already went through this once in the 90s, and the same truths are still
true: nobody wants to put a face-covering headset just to communicate with
other people.

~~~
wiremine
> Why is VR inevitable?

Good point, I agree that I am making a big assumption.

That said, I don't think the argument that "it didn't work before" is valid. I
don't think people want face-covering headsets that _suck_.

If I can wear an _awesome_ headset and have a virtual conversation with my
family across the country, I'd purchase one in a heartbeat.

~~~
bane
Who would you be conversing with? A video of your family with screens attached
to their faces or some avatars representing your family members? I don't
understand why so many people have trouble understanding that you can't see
the faces of people who have something blocking their faces.

So if it's avatars, what are those avatars going to be? Some off the shelf
selection of Mii/Second Life/WoW avatars?

But you'll say "modern technology can provide avatars that are very realistic
simulacrums of actual people!"

and I say, who will build those models? Now people have to buy high-res 3d
scanners for their home as well? Or spend loads of money on modeling teams to
build these avatars? Or go to Facebook centers where people get their faces
scanned and avatars built?

And the rift doesn't yet even support facial expression mapping.

How do you think this is going to work?

You think people lose their shit over privacy issues now? Wait until Facebook
has a sub-mm accurate 3d model of every person's face!

~~~
nknighthb
You are experiencing a fundamental failure of imagination. VR goggles do not
necessarily have to remain large, face-blocking objects forever, nor do high-
resolution 3D scanners have to remain large, expensive items.

Other people are thinking about the future. You are stuck in the present.

~~~
bane
So your premise is that something you need to put in front of your eyes to
see, won't be in front of your eyes at some point imaginary point in the
future, and it doesn't matter if they are blocking your face because 3d face
scanners, for which people will use them approximately once, will also become
so cheap that people won't mind buying them in some imaginary point in the
future.

Okay. Sure. I can't argue against arbitrary hypotheticals composed of
arbitrarily defined technological sophistication measured against some
indefinite point in the future with an unspecified price point that will
always fit the future you happen to want.

Just like when I was six, and my friend kept changing the rules of the game we
were playing so he always won, you got me.

~~~
nknighthb
I have many possible answers to your statements, such as an observation that
we already have head-mounted displays that do not block faces, or that real-
time 3d face scanning is a potential advancement, but you're such a
depressingly cynical person to try and converse with, I don't know why I'd
bother.

Your statement about when you were six is unwittingly apt. Such a concern with
"rules" rather than nuance and discourse is befitting of a six year old, not
the adult I optimistically presumed you to be.

I suppose this was inexcusably optimistic, given that I'd already read your
statement that you would, seemingly regardless of circumstance, take a $2
billion offer and "retire to Malta", and feel no remorse for what effect that
might have on anyone else.

Your worldview is sad. Sufficiently so that you have literally ruined my day.
It's hard to forget having encountered such cynicism and conscious disdain for
the possibilities open to us through technological and social advancement.

~~~
bane
Sorry I didn't realize I was talking to somebody with a completely made up and
fantastical worldview, where hard problems are instantly solvable with fairy
dust and dream juice.

No wonder you feel like you can invent any future you wish whole cloth and in
just a couple years, reality will bend to your will and products will appear
on the market that bring your future to life at a price so cheap as to
basically be commodities.

If thinking about how things work in the real world, identifying the problems
and doing the hard grunt work to solve them is cynicism, I want some of what
you're smoking. Because nothing happens as easy or as quick as you
optimistically imply.

You've probably never brought a product to market, even one with zero R&D
cost. Gone from idea to box on store shelves. It's _hard_. A few words of
pithy advice and hard wishing don't cut it.

If it did we'd have hard-AI, FTL, jetpacks, and would live full-time in the
metaverse from our isolation tanks on an orbital platform around Venus or
Proxima Centauri fed only by our immersion in a pool of reconfigurable
nanoparticle nutrients. We'd live lives as long as we care to in a post-
monetary society.

We've been doing VR for the better part of 30 years and _still_ barely
understand the interaction models. I've used state-of-the-art haptic feedback
systems intended for VR that are so new that there haven't even been articles
written about them. They're the result of a hundred million dollars of nation
state level R&D by teams of PhD researchers and they're still impossibly crude
approximations of what real-life interaction feels like. The time-to-market on
_just_ this kind of device is expected to be 30 years at best. The expected
cost in 2013 dollars when that happens is $150k-200k _per_ limb.

Things have to be possible on the technology curve we're already on and have
to respect physics. You can't waive your hands and insist that in your fantasy
world it should just be possible. They have to be something that can be taken
from nascent R&D to market at a cost consumers can actually buy. More
importantly they have to be useful, non-fatiguing interfaces that don't take
up half of somebody's living room. Most importantly, they have to be socially
acceptable enough that the majority of the population won't feel weird
participating.

Even the smallest of practical concerns, like will the headset smudge a
woman's makeup can make or break something. Sweeping social change, where
everybody on the planet suddenly stops what they've been doing for a lifetime
(or in a larger context for thousands of years in their culture) and suddenly
adapts to whatever fantasy product you've placed out are among _the_ hardest
things to push forward. Look at the near panic about somebody walking around
with a near invisible screen on their face and a single low-resolution camera
-- Google glass.

> such as an observation that we already have head-mounted displays that do
> not block faces

Like what, Glass? It also doesn't provide the necessary optics via _physics_
to provide VR. If what you're talking about are two Glass-like displays,
positioned like Glass, no matter the resolution or latency, you are no loner
talking about VR and we're in a different discussion.

Here's a even did a mockup for you
[http://i.imgur.com/njToujz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/njToujz.jpg)

Glass isn't even capable of AR, let alone stereoscopic VR. So let's shift the
displays down a couple inches. Then what's the point? I may as well just be
looking at a 3d monitor. This buys me nothing and doesn't buy me convenience.
You won't be walking around with this gear on, there's no camera to shoot your
face and nobody wants to talk around with a quad copter taking video all day.
And then you're _literally_ obscuring your face because the displays are
_literally_ in front of your eyes. Physics is a ruleset we can't wave our
hands at and get around.

> or that real-time 3d face scanning is a potential advancement

There's only two possible interaction models for the kind of virtual
communication, the glass one which is trivial to demonstrate isn't a good
model and the fully VR model which then requires you to be modeled and your
conversation partner to be modeled to you each have something to look at.
Presumably people will want to use their actual faces and a static model isn't
very interesting to talk to. So you either need a model that's fully rigged
and a device to recognize your expressions and translate them into controls
for the rig.

[https://cdn.tutsplus.com/ae/uploads/legacy/637_vfx/AvatarFac...](https://cdn.tutsplus.com/ae/uploads/legacy/637_vfx/AvatarFacialCapture.jpg)

[http://metalarcade.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/Resident-E...](http://metalarcade.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/Resident-Evil-6-Interview-Facial-Mocap-Sam-
Worthington-Avatar.jpg)

Which we already do have, but it kind of sucks for any kind of general use.

Let's pretend for a minute that you don't have to markup somebody's face with
dots to track, and some kind of near-term kinect-like system solves this.

Is this your vision of what people will be walking around with on their head?
Except with two Google glass-like displays in front of their eyes?

Here's I did another mockup of your vision. Sorry for the shitty photoshop
skills.

[http://i.imgur.com/BaPV2Va.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/BaPV2Va.jpg)

Is this really better than just video conferencing? Do I get anything out of
this at all?

You can call me a cynic, and sorry if I killed your fantasy buzz, but not a
single thing I've said here or before isn't true. Today or tomorrow.

Yeah sure, I read Snow Crash and got into the notion of the Metaverse. I think
it's cool. I'm on board with the idea in principle. I'm just as upset as the
next guy that the closest we've gotten to that vision is Second Life, EVE or
WoW. It _feels_ really close, but there are lots of gotchas that need _lots_
of work to get past. Fantasy speculation isn't going to cut it.

~~~
nknighthb
Once again, your cynical rant focuses entirely on the present state of COTS
technology with no allowance for advancement.

Your assumption about me, by the way, is entirely wrong. If you've brought a
product to market, I'm sorry the experience turned you into a cynical
curmudgeon. It only turned me into someone who had accomplished something
hard. Things being hard is not a reason not to do them, a reason to act as if
others won't do them, or to fail to look around and notice the advancements
occurring all around us.

~~~
bane
My impression of you is that the letters "VR" have short circuited your brian
and caused you to forget that things have to still fit within the constraints
of physics. Today, or with any possible future advancement. Hand waiving and
"advancement" won't ever surmount these constraints. Building towards a future
that can't ever happen is not a useful thing to do.

Things being hard are not a reason not to do things, things being stupid or
impossible are.

~~~
nknighthb
The letters "VR" aren't even relevant to a belief that two-way 3D video chat
is practical today, and will become more practical in the future.

You've bound yourself by artificial limitations on your thought process.
Please do not act as if people who do not share those boundaries must be
idiots.

Edit: By the way, since you brought it up, I've never read Snow Crash. I
really don't know anything about it other than a brief synopsis I read at some
point years ago. It's unwise to assume anything about my opinions comes from
pop culture, as I'm largely disconnected from it.

~~~
bane
Draw a diagram of how you think it will work.

~~~
nknighthb
How I think _what_ will work? 3D video chat? You need a diagram for two
cameras, a 3D monitor, and ordinary 3D glasses?

Or did you mean something else? Perhaps something you've been _assuming_ I'm
talking about because your response to abstract notions is hostility and
arrogance, rather than a search for common ground and understanding? Perhaps
you've _assumed_ all this time that I've been saying a specific product, the
Rift, could be used for face-to-face interaction, because you didn't ask, but
instead called me a six-year-old idiot?

~~~
bane
And now you have changed the rules again. Don't pretend like you're looking
for common ground when you keep changing the fundamentals of the discussion.

The discussion is, oculus rift, 3d chat. Diagram it.

~~~
nknighthb
That may be what you want the discussion to be, because then you "win"
according to some "rules" you wish existed, but it's not. Or wasn't, rather.
The discussion is long over. It was over the moment you decided to be a dick.

~~~
bane
So no then. You can't. Because it doesn't make any sense and it's a bad idea.
I'm sorry you had to be the person who had the idea and I'm sorry I had to be
the person to call you on it.

Okay, to be honest, _everybody_ has this idea about VR. In your mind you see a
glorious 3d representation of person you are chatting with, if your
imagination is powerful enough, you can even feel the frame of the headset on
your face and the wash of the display glow against the contours of your nose.
But everybody who ever thinks about this idea, and is in a position to try and
do it, runs into the same fundamental problem. Because in their imagination
and their dreams, they're never in the place of the person they're chatting
with, to see what they're seeing and they never realize that what the other
person _must_ see is them with a headset on...and then they realize the person
they first saw in their dreams must have one on as well and the entire
illusion shatters. You can't achieve the kind of telepresence we all wish for
today or anytime in the near future.

I know you're struggling with accepting this scenario, but I've watched this
same scenario play out for 30 years. There's _nothing_ new about the Rift
except it's consumer cheap. I've personally used systems better than the Rift
and the moment you get the headset on, you realize VR telepresence, via video,
won't ever work.

Nobody wants to have that kind of chat experience, so the only other possible
mode is to do it with avatars.

Guess what, that's what's currently being done.

[https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=5...](https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=5968)

[http://www.worlds.com/index2.html](http://www.worlds.com/index2.html)

[https://www.activeworlds.com/index.html](https://www.activeworlds.com/index.html)

[http://someyworks.com/vc/vc.html](http://someyworks.com/vc/vc.html)

[http://www.vr-fun.net/](http://www.vr-fun.net/)

The experience is obviously not what you or I are talking about though, even
the first link which actually uses a VR headset (the Rift). But there's a
_very_ long list of well known issues to surmount that haven't been solved yet
for very good reasons. No amount of "let's suppose that..." will make some of
those very hard things a reality. At least not with the goal of something the
general public will accept in enough volume to make it worthwhile.

Sorry to be a dick, but there really are unworkable ideas. You're a
consultant, you know that you sometimes have to break bad news to the people
you work for when they simply can't do something because it's not possible.
You might come across as an asshole when you do, and people's feelings might
get hurt, but somebody has to break the bad news.

------
higherpurpose
First off, they should've expected that reaction if they sold to _anyone_ ,
because:

#1 it was too early, and they still had a lot of investment money

#2 they've implied many times that they wouldn't sell. I don't remember if
they said it directly, but they certainly made it seem that way

#3 they basically decided to sell the company "overnight". That took everyone
by surprise, and it made the move extremely suspicious (personally, I still
think Mark Andreessen forced the decision, and Oculus was more like "ok, well
I guess that could work", rather than enthusiastically try to sell the company
themselves, prior to that)

#4 Facebook seems like one of the worst companies that could've bought Oculus,
and no one would've even _dreamed_ that would ever happen, from the community.
A lot of people were like "WTF? Is this a joke?" when they heard it. And it's
one of the worst, not just because people hated it for being so privacy-
intrusive, but also because there's no connection between Oculus and Facebook,
and usually when the cultures and visions are very different, the acquisition
fails.

I don't believe them when they say they really din't expect the reaction to
Facebook buying them. If they didn't maybe they aren't paying much attention
to what's happening in the tech community lately. I think Oculus could've only
done worse than Facebook if they would've been bought by Oracle.

~~~
dragontamer
They are in a bad position overall however. Sony Morpheous looks like it has
taken all the good ideas from Oculus.

And with Oculus selling out to Facebook, the "indie" community may not be as
supportive of the platform.

~~~
Golddisk
I think that other companies announcing their plans for VR is one of the
reasons Oculus sold to FB, especially so quickly. They see themselves needing
the backing of a big tech company if they want to be able to compete with
companies like Sony or Microsoft.

------
mikeash
They're not actually that dumb, right?

"According to Mitchell, the company’s current goal is to educate people about
the merge and why it is a good thing. He thinks this is working since the
negativity is finally starting to cool down."

I assume this "gee, we had no idea there would be this reaction" thing is a
subtle part of that education campaign.

~~~
jonlucc
Interesting that they think the public is becoming more alright with the
acquisition because the anger is slowing. It's like they don't understand that
after all bad news, the stories and comments about it will wane over time.

~~~
baby
The anger slowed in a matter of hours though, it was pretty fast.

~~~
LoganCale
Not really. Pretty much everyone who was angry is still angry. They just
stopped posting about it constantly, because what's the point?

~~~
deletes
You don't know that, they might as well changed their opinion and are now too
embarrassed to speak about it.

I think a lot of people were acting with pure emotion. Once the surprise
subsides the logical reasoning kicks in and you get the bigger picture.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_they might as well changed their opinion and are now too embarrassed to speak
about it._

Do people do this? It seems like people who change their opinion are also
vocal about it.

~~~
deletes
Note the phrase _might as well_. The example was a stab at how you can't make
such assumptions.

------
lawl
Yeah well, I don't buy this.

However, I think Oculus could easily kill any doubts over that aquisition by
promising to release an open source driver.

Because that would mean that even if the Rift universe they built is beeing
crapped on by like buttions, there's still the option to build an alternative
open source universe using the open source driver.

Personally I think that would restore my faith in the Rift.

~~~
danabramov
>even if the Rift universe they built is beeing crapped on by like buttons

Why do a lot of people keep repeating this? Does Google create self-driving
cars to show ads on the windshields? I just don't get it. What on the earth
makes you think Facebook bought Oculus to show ads and like buttons inside
your games? If, if VR becomes the Next Big Thing, will the like buttons “from
the old Facebook“ matter as much, or will the social need to be re-imagined
anyway?

~~~
lawl
> _What on the earth makes you think Facebook bought Oculus to show ads_

Zuckerberg himself [0].

Quote:

> _so that this becomes a network where people can be communicating and buying
> things and virtual goods, and there might be advertising in the world_

"might" is good enough for me in that case, because it means it's clearly an
option. I'm not really fond of the idea that the Rift is becoming a VR Habbo
Hotel.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471699)

~~~
danabramov
He's not saying “stick it in your games”, is he? He is talking different kinds
of applications. Also, I wouldn't mind ads on the streets in a game city
because I'm sort of used to them in the real world. Ads actually look better
in a 3D world than on web pages.

------
MarkHarmon
Many people view Facebook policies as creepy and unethical, that is probably
driving this negative response. We don't know where mainstream VR will take us
in ten years, but we do know that there have been many assaults to our privacy
and we don't want to create another keyhole into our private lives.

------
officemonkey
I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it.

Instagram definitely has location and social graph data to exploit.

But Oculus? What is FB going to do with that?

I think most people still think of FB as the site and advertising sales for
the site.

But if you see FB as a conglomerate like Google, Apple, and Sony then it makes
more sense. FB is diversifying, buying up promising technology with the hopes
of leveraging new markets out of it.

Maybe they want to make the Gameboy of wearable gaming? They have had success
in working with gaming companies (Zynga and King might have peaked, but FB
still made money.) And they certainly have a enough power to make things
happen.

~~~
kybernetikos
I pretty sure that they want to create something like a successful second life
- i.e. a VR social network, where users have their own virtual property that
they can customize and virtual spaces where they can meet. Basically something
like the metaverse in Snowcrash.

And I can completely see the high ups in Occulus thinking that this is a
brilliant match of visions.

~~~
Recoil42
Okay, any reason that would succeed where VRML failed? I just don't see it.

~~~
rmc
No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame.

This was the slashdot editor's byline when Apple released the iPod. Just
because a technology exists at one point and failed, doesn't mean that sort of
technology can never work. Apple released the Newton ages ago, and we didn't
switch to touch screen mobile devices till the iPhone.

~~~
officemonkey
Speak for yourself. Many many people were using touch screens on Palm devices
throughout the late 90s and early 2000s.

~~~
rmc
Yes, lots of people were. But it wasn't mainstream.

~~~
officemonkey
I'm pretty sure you weren't working in business in the United States in the
late 90s. The Palm devices were the fancy gadgets to have.

The were vastly more mainstream than the Newton ever was. They lost traction
when the Blackberry phone emerged in the early 2000s, but if they had been
able to get in the phone game faster, Palm could have beaten Apple to the
smartphone.

------
dragontamer
Strangely, they understand why people would be angry about selling out to
Microsoft or Sony (which frankly, are far more legitimate platforms than
Facebook. IE: Oculus on XBox or Oculus on PS4 would be great). However,
selling out to a large company is almost always going to be seen as a negative
when you bill yourself as an "indie company".

Facebook on the other hand, is facing a huge amount of negativity as well.
Their stock price dropped by 15% this past week, as investors don't understand
the purchase at all.

------
beshrkayali
> “We assumed that the reaction would be negative, especially from our core
> community. Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. I
> don’t think we expected it to be so negative.”

So basically __*k the core community? What Oculus founders don 't understand
is that without this core community they wouldn't have existed in the way they
are right now, probably not even approached by Facebook or anyone else.

Sure, it could be good to the future of Oculus, what do I know, but it's a big
FU to the core community, specially that we've been disregarded like this.

------
daenz
I've been thinking about this Facebook acquisition for a little while, and in
my mind, the only play that makes sense for Facebook is to become the login
gateway to Oculus games.

For many Windows games, there's Windows Live...a social-ish, login service
that you literally _have_ to register and sign in with in order to play the
game. You cannot opt out. If Facebook became this... "Sign in with
Facebook"... for all commercial Oculus games, they would have a guaranteed
mindshare on the future younger generations of gamers.

And becoming just the gatekeepers would more or less let them be hands-off
with the actual Oculus direction as a company, which is in line with what's
been said so far.

~~~
danabramov
This doesn't make sense at all.

Imagine the new generation goes purely VR and doesn't use the “old web” for
entertainment. What would be the point of “Login with Facebook“ if those kids
don't use the web anyway?

This is a very narrow vision.

~~~
daenz
You sound like you've never used a mandatory social login for a game. I never
go to [https://login.live.com](https://login.live.com) but I have an
account...one I had to create to play a game. I receive in-game messages and
friend requests during game sessions.

Take a look at the Games for Windows - LIVE feature set and tell me that isn't
a social network that Facebook would want a part of:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_for_Windows_%E2%80%93_Liv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_for_Windows_%E2%80%93_Live#Games_for_Windows_.E2.80.93_Live_features)

I'm not limiting the vision of Oculus...the sky is the limit. But I think the
play for Facebook's immediate involvement will be similar to Games for
Windows. Social gaming data is actionable to the Facebook business.

------
pnathan
In the final analysis, deeds define you and your company, not words.

Oculus sold to Facebook. Fine. Oculus doesn't have to fundraise anymore, and
has a theoretically unlimited R&D budget. Facebook has the cloud expertise to
handle virtual worlds at scale. These are valid reasons to be acquired.

But more fundamentally, there are a variety of large corporations with big
pockets that could have done the merger.

Facebook's interest will be in jamming the virtual world _full_ of ads and
mining the smallest action to increase ad sales. And everyone understands this
and knows this. Google's interest would have been similar, but perhaps skewed
towards AR and Glass integration. Microsoft would have _likely_ skewed towards
selling corporate VR solutions (these exist(ed) already, but have not gotten
press or wide adoption). MSNBC or other media corp would have wanted more to
sell talking heads and ads. Etc.

I don't much care about the gamer community here, but I really wouldn't want
the VR world to be a 3d representation of Facebook (something I fled years
ago).

------
petercooper
I don't think Mozilla expected the backlash this week either.

Hundreds of thousands of people with very rapid ways to share opinions (Hacker
News, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) equals a very different scene to that of even 10
years ago.

------
doesnt_know
Kickstarter is all about directly funding unique concepts and products by
independent entities. The whole point is to avoid the "traditional" investment
model. Or I suppose more accurately, fund what the "traditional model" wants
nothing to do with.

If I was a backer, I would probably want the Oculus to fail now, just out of
spite.

~~~
XorNot
There's a certain irony to this statement. Community funding and all that, but
if they don't do what I say then by golly I'll be mad I can't crush them like
the corporations I'm protesting against!

------
neona
At least to me, the issue is more that Facebook is not who I want developing
these technologies.

I think facebook is going to eventually use this to create a modern connected
virtual world. Which is something I dearly want. I just don't want it
controlled by facebook.

In the short term I don't think facebook will screw Oculus up, however.

------
venomsnake
One thing I don't get is why did it have to be acquisition. If FB had just
acquired 10-30% of the company at 2G$ valuation and left control to the other
people they would have had once again first class access to the technology but
the backlash would have been smaller.

Acquiring stake validates the technology. Buy outs - they mean you try to lock
the other away from it.

------
themodelplumber
Facebook is right in the middle of pissing off just about everyone with a FB
page, and Oculus is all excited about advancing VR by pairing with Facebook.
Seriously, a simple geek campaign like "let's call it the Facebook Oculus from
now on" would probably have a good chance at destroying the project. It's not
that I personally have anything against either FB or Oculus, but it seems like
a huge business risk to everyone involved. The one point that sticks out as a
plus is the "this will advance VR no matter what" point. You can safely bet
(probably) that this will contribute to the future of VR.

~~~
Dylan16807
I don't follow your point about a campaign. As apprehensive as I am about this
buyout, "Facebook Oculus" has only neutral connotations to me.

------
ianstallings
Maybe if you replace "Facebook" with "Walmart" the comparison will be easier.
Because that's what FB is, the Walmart of the Internet. It sucks and it could
be so much better, but it's packed with "content" and everyone still goes
there reluctantly. When you have high hopes for a new player in the game the
last thing you want is them buddying up to a company whos whole strategy can
be summed up as "find the lowest common denominator".

Is this judgement a fair assessment? Of course not. Facebook is just our
whipping boy.

------
SixSigma
Facebook have lost 7% share value since the announcement, that's $10bn off the
market cap.

[http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/facebook-share-price-
continue...](http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/facebook-share-price-continues-to-
fall/0130265)

~~~
SixSigma
One should ignore that speculation. I got caught up in the hyperbole. I should
know what X caused change in price Y is one of the fallacies of market
reporting.

------
LarryMade2
I guess for me:

A) Doesn't seem to make sense whats Facebook going to do with such a device?
They don't do gaming, manufacturing, or design.

B) I for one am not happy with Facebook presently, they've morphed their great
community/communication platform into a frustrating ad-pushing machine that
will only let you interact with your community/friends at a an increasing
price.

C) Given those two, I can only shudder at what Oculus Facebook will become.

------
uptown
I don't think Facebook's acquisition of Oculus has much to do with gaming. I
think what it does is give Facebook access to a part of our minds that few
others may have. What we look at ... whether in a real world or a virtual one
... reveals what we covet. Perhaps it's something we'd never search for in a
search-engine - but it is able to be leveraged to enhance the profile of a
person in order to more-perfectly market to them. I suspect that what we look
at, and for how long, will convert far better than anything we ever type into
a Google search box. It's why Google is building Glass ... and why Facebook
bought Oculus.

------
hibikir
You don't even have to hate facebook to not like the merger. Anyone that has
been part of a big corporate merger knows that the small company will very
rarely keep its old culture for very long. Being bought changes things, and it
rarely makes the company more productive. In all my years in the industry,
I've not been a part of one where the consumer was helped: The only winners
have always been the few people that got the millions from being acquired.

Not every acquisition like this is a total failure, but so many of them are,
it's very hard to see any acquisition with optimism, unless you want both
sides to fail. Can IBM please buy Oracle?

------
data-cat
I don't get why everyone is hating. The fact of the matter is Facebook is
about to put a lot of funding in to Oculus. With a lot of other big companies
getting in to VR right now, like Sony and apparently Microsoft, Oculus will
need that to stay relevant.

When I first found out about the buyout I thought of the same thing this
article points out; Facebook also purchased Instagram and it seems to be doing
just fine. If Facebook truly lets Oculus "be who they are going to be", I'm
sure they will do just fine.

------
rch
I don't use Facebook and I don't play games, but I'm curious to see if the
acquisition will have a positive effect on pure VR; meaning the kind of VR
Jaron Lanier talks about.

It seems like FB could actually bridge between VR, AR, and everyone else more
easily than most. I can imagine attending the next presidential inauguration
(virtually) because of this deal, and that wouldn't have been the case with
Valve, for example.

~~~
stan_rogers
I'm pretty much of the same mind here. A _huge_ part of the backlash (and a
large number of the comments here) seems to revolve around gaming (hardcore or
otherwise). Valve, for instance, would have been okay, but EA, Sony and even
Microsoft have been mentioned as better/more suitable. And I firmly believe
that, while I get the appeal of gaming VR, it rather misses the larger
picture. I no more want to see this sort of tech tied to gaming, even
philosophically, than I want to see it become a dongle for Autodesk software
(which, by the way, would be a much more meaningful application than gaming).
I want holonovels and walkthroughs and avatar space for those whose meatspace
experience isn't great. Many of the dreams we dreamed when _ubiquitous
computing_ meant that you got a punchcard with your bill and a handful of
people owned something like a TRS-80 or an Apple ][ are on the verge of
becoming very real (and not in quite the same way that strong AI has always
been "almost here"). FB has an intrinsic interest in the avatar space part of
that, but they're also as good a bet as anyone to diversify into the other
realms.

------
MPSimmons
Darn. This means they're not as smart as I thought.

------
awestley
Keep an open mind. No need to get angry (yet).

------
vermontdevil
If they sold to Valve, the reaction would have been different. But it's all
initial impression.

We'll see long term how it shakes out. I do admit it seemed odd to me that
Facebook would be the buyer. I just don't see the connection.

------
dragontamer
[http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/1257](http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/1257)

Relevant comic on the issue

------
sparkzilla
I think the real victim here is Kickstarter. I saw some project for a new kind
of energy-saving device and all the comments basically said "So you'll just
take our money and sell to Facebook?"

------
bowlofpetunias
tl;dr: People who react negatively are dumb and ignorant, and need to be
"eductated".

Suddenly I understand much clearer how Facebook and Oculus are a good cultural
match.

------
kmfrk
Two words: Google Glass.

Maybe they are the kinds of people who are excited about something like Google
Glass, and who just don't see what bothers people about Facebook?

------
skywhopper
A few billion dollars can lead you to believe most anything.

------
detay
if they asked me I would tell.

------
arrc
Guys Facebook is no Microsoft or Google who only buy to soft kill the
competitor.

FB is different just look at their past acquisitions like Instagram and
others, they all survived and are still in active development and rolling out
new features.

If it were MS/Google acquiring Oculus, negative reactions would have been
justified.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
All of FB's past acquisitions before Oculus (just Instagram and WhatsApp) were
social media platforms, precisely what FB specialized in and knows how to work
with. They don't need to do any radical shift with them, they already serve as
private data and analytics incubators.

Oculus is a completely unrelated avenue for them, and one can only wonder what
their intentions are. Zuckerberg already made a PR statement that the company
intends on turning Oculus into a social platform of some sort, so this does
raise some eyebrows.

As much as I have ethical quandaries with Google, I'd be more content if they
had acquired Oculus.

~~~
threeseed
But what makes Facebook different to what Google was a few years ago ?

Google has been a long time advertising player that only recently got into
hardware.

~~~
logicallee
>But what makes Facebook different to what Google was a few years ago ?

Mark Zuckerberg.

