
Facebook’s $2B Oculus deal happened over the last five days - bjenik
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/25/facebook-oculus-deal/
======
froo
Sony announces Project Morpheus 6 days ago. Oculus sells to Facebook today and
deal started 5 days ago (apparently).

This is either

a) Founders saw writing on the wall and decided to get paid early rather than
have to compete with a company with much deeper pockets and a preexisting
fanbase.

b) Facebook saw that Sony's announcement validated the space and decided to
buy the company with most mindshare at the moment as it is an asset.

People have wondered why Microsoft didn't buy the company? Well, Oculus have
seen what, $90M in funding so far? The investors would have wanted what.. 5X
10X ROI?

At 5X.. $450M is a metric fuckton (excuse the language) of money that they
could throw at in-house development of something similar. I imagine having a
VR kit that integrates heavily with Kinect has the potential to be huge, so
they at least have to be thinking about it.

~~~
kailuowang
IMO it's not just the deeper pocket and preexisting fanbase, it's Sony's great
relationship with the gaming industry (not to mention its high quality first
party studios) that is almost impossible for Oculus to compete with. The
founder then probably realized that gaming is no longer the main path Oculus
should focus on. If the new strategy is to pursue a more broader application
of VR then working with FB makes more sense than it looks.

As a gamer, though, I can hardly see any other application of VR having more
potential to become mainstream than VR in gaming.

~~~
qq66
Tourism could be a huge application of VR. I want to visit about 1000x as many
places as I'll ever be able to -- VR could be a big part of making that
possible.

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psbp
"Zuckerberg explained that he felt that Oculus represented an entirely new
post-PC and post-mobile platform."

He's probably right. While Google and others are focusing on half-baked
wearables as their key to the future, facebook just bought a huge chunk of the
most likely successor.

~~~
Oculus
Ironically, gathered from reading the initial reactions of early adopters, I
think they just destroyed the chances of Oculus succeeding.

~~~
joshmlewis
Is your name a coincidence?

~~~
Oculus
Yeah, I just like the name :)

------
mtgx
That makes Palmer look even more like a greedy bastard, and that all he cared
about was money all along. When he heard the $2 billion amount he was probably
like: "So you want us to kill all of our gaming plans now, or should we wait a
year to lay it easy on the fans?"

~~~
christoph
I don't think people should be too harsh on Palmer. He's still very young. To
me it feels like Facebook bought this insanely cheap. It's $17bn cheaper than
Whatsapp.

I'm sure there was some smooth talking involved in the deal. I couldn't help
but think of the billion dollars scene from The Social Network[1] when I heard
about the deal.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0n7vTLz1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0n7vTLz1U)

~~~
sillysaurus3
Palmer could have made far more money by waiting. Maybe he was tired of
Oculus.

~~~
lazyjones
Serious question - why would he need any more money? And how certain would
that have been?

I can't imagine anyone who hasn't been deep into "FU money" for a while
actually choosing "perhaps far more than 2 billion later" over "2 billion
now".

------
ucha
>> Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who sits on Facebook’s board of
directors, recused himself from the negotiations.

I would really like to understand how these sort of conflicts of interest are
dealt with and if they are investigated by the SEC/other government body...

------
zakelfassi
A $2B deal over five days ... sure. A 100K funding takes at least 2months.
And, check this >
[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/)

~~~
toufka
Pretty clearly in communication for at _least_ a month.

------
deletes
I can't comprehend that John Carmack is now working for facebook.

~~~
leoc
He sounds pretty happy about it:

[https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631990560903169](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631990560903169)

[https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631430533246976](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631430533246976)

~~~
deletes
_I suppose I will get a FB account now, so that may lead to some writing a
little longer than tweet length_

If only there existed such a thing before facebook, a platform to enable
others on the internet to read it,... a blog if you will.

Oh wait...

[http://www.altdevblogaday.com/author/john-
carmack/](http://www.altdevblogaday.com/author/john-carmack/)

\--------

I guess If someone gives you a lot of money you have to talk nice about them.

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Gravityloss
To a not-so-knowledgeable person like myself, this seems like a bubble. Is it
so hard to wire up some displays, optics and gyros? 2 billion? What could you
do in-house or with a new team with, say 20 million?

Maybe it is so hard.

~~~
integraton
Two informative decks from Michael Abrash:

[http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/Abrash%20Dev%2...](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/Abrash%20Dev%20Days%202014.pdf)

[http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2013/MAbrashGDC2013...](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2013/MAbrashGDC2013.pdf)

~~~
Gravityloss
Thanks, that's a great response. Seems like higher refresh rates and better
sensors could solve a lot.

Has everybody else except the few panel makers resigned on actually creating
advances in display technologies? Seems theoretically OLED tech can go to
100,000 Hz.

------
newhouseb
I'm sure this just means that the legal back and forth happened over five
days, not that the deal started five days ago.

This recode article has more detail which makes this much less of a
sensationalist story: [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/)

------
o0-0o
Virtual reality will never be reality.

~~~
ctdonath
Just like computers in every home.

And certainly not multiple Cray 2 supercomputers with dozen-megabit/s multi-
mile wireless networking accessing darn near the sum of human knowledge - in
your _pocket_ , costing a mere few days' pay.

Sometimes the "will never happen" is just waiting for someone credible and
insightful to pull together off-the-shelf technology, commoditize some magic
stuck in a lab, lead a team to weave it all together, and present the world
with something everyone wants but nobody is willing to buy into until everyone
else does.

A couple decades ago I had a Virtual iGlasses HMD. (Still have it. Anyone want
it?) Sure it had its limitations, but the capability was phenomenal for the
time ... alas, between the state of technology and nobody including support in
suitable software, it went nowhere. Now we have the off-the-shelf technology
to leverage (current dev kit is a mere $350), $2B to commoditize the magic
needed, and Carmack to validate the implementation for universal buy-in and
support.

The only thing missing is normalization of strapping opaque goggles to your
face for prolonged periods while thrashing around on the couch.

------
sarreph
I wouldn't be surprised if a sense of awe of Zuck showing interest in the
project helped shelve initial doubts about working with/for such a behemoth.

~~~
sillysaurus3
I'm guessing the reason they sold was simple: The owner wanted the money.

------
barrkel
I wonder if something (or somebody) forced this.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Greed?

~~~
RollAHardSix
You mean 2 Billion Dollars. That's a number beyond greed. That means you are
taking care of you, your family, and your employees. Everyone can take the
moral high road but if you were staring at a contract like that, could you
really say you would turn it down?

You also have no idea of the terms. For all we know Oculus will still act as
an independent agency only with better access to talent, much more capital
access, and a huge advertising method-facebook itself!

Or they are devoured by facebook and never see the light of day. Either way,
it's 2 billion dollars and all the financial freedom that comes with having
that much money.

(Yes I know most of it's in stocks, but unlike everyone else I don't think
people realize, facebook isn't going away in the next few years, they are a
microsoft-a lumbering giant branching out through tech acquisitions).

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _facebook isn 't going away in the next few years, they are a microsoft_

That was kind of my point. To quote a message I've posted before: Facebook is
the new Microsoft, basically. Low on creativity and innovation, high on cash,
riding to success a huge wave of demand that would have carried anybody else
who just happened to be there at the right time.

So now you're the Oculus guys, and you're thinking "do I really want to be
bought by this kind of entity?" The cash sure is nice, as you pointed out, but
the nature of the puppet master is also important.

