Facebook Buys Oculus Rift

Sometimes a news story comes along that’s so completely surprising that you actually do a double take. This is one of those stories. Facebook have announced that it plans to acquire the virtual reality company Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Although Zuckerberg, in the post announcing the deal, say he doesn’t plan to change the current gaming focus for the Rift, fans of the device have become upset and angry over the acquisition.

From Facebook:

Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won’t be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there’s a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We’re going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.

But this is just the start. 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.

This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.

These are just some of the potential uses. By working with developers and partners across the industry, together we can build many more. One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.

People working on the Oculus Rift agree that Facebook will help speed up their vision, although they’re not likely to complain. Others are less hopeful. The Minecraft VR release, for instance, has since been cancelled, and a one of the top gaming stories on social network Reddit today linked to the refunds page of the official Oculus website. One of the big problem is from people who backed the Kickstarter campaign, which is understandable. If I’d have helped crowdfund something that instantly got sold for $2 billion, I’d be asking for my money back.

Others are a little quicker to judge, mostly because of already disliking Facebook. The truth is, we won’t know for certain what’s happening for the next few months.