Facebook buys Oculus VR, the manufacturer of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset 
Facebook has announced that it will buy Oculus VR, a Californian start-up which specialises in virtual reality headsets, for $2 billion.
The deal includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million Facebook shares, valued at $1.6 billion, as well as further $300 million in bonuses for Oculus’s employees, providing the company reaches certain agreed milestones.
We’ve agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology.
I spent an afternoon talking technology with Mark Zuckerberg, and the next week I find out he bought us. – John Carmack.
John Carmack, Oculus VR’s chief technology officer, said that he was left in the dark about the acquisition right up to the moment of the announcement, but he welcomes the move, because he believes that Facebook’s financial muscle would ultimately benefit Oculus VR by allowing adequate resources for the company, thus speeding up
The deal was announced by Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, on 25 March 2014 via a post on his Facebook profile: ‘I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in VR technology.’
‘Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.’ … ‘This is where Oculus comes in. They build virtual reality technology, like the Oculus Rift headset.’ …
‘Oculus’s mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences.’
the development of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift headset. ‘For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week,’ says Oculus VR CTO and continues: ‘I expect the Facebook deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crises for VR.’
But the acquisition produced also some negative reactions.
Many original backers of Oculus Rift, Oculus VR’s flagship virtual reality headset on the crowd funding web site Kickstarter, accused Oculus and Palmer Luckey, Oculus VR’s founder, of selling out and betraying their trust.
The [Oculus] 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.’ writes Mark Zuckerberg‘But this is just the start.’ he continues, ‘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.’ …‘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.
Virtual reality was once a dream of science fiction. One day, this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.
Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together. I can’t wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us.’
Markus Persson, creator of the hugely popular sandbox video game Minecraft declared that the planned Oculus Rift version of Minecraft is now off. ‘Facebook creeps me out’ – said Persson on Twitter.
Facebook creeps me out. There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them, tweets Markus Persson.
Investors also seemed to be unconvinced, and Facebook shares plunged 6.5{c3dff7e40898b2032b0111a72b67edf002ad147bfb18944e2b59e80a70602138} to $60.66 after the social network’s announcement that it was buying the virtual reality firm for $2 billion in cash and stock.
There won’t be Minecraft for Oculus, following the news of the acquisition by Facebook.
We here at GCG cautiously welcome the acquisition and, in line with John Carmack’s statement, believe that the move could prove to be a good thing (providing Facebook will stand by its promise that ‘Oculus will continue operating independently’).
With Facebook’s billions in the company’s coffers, Oculus VR can now leave all financial worries behind and concentrate fully on the technical issues and the acquisition should ultimately benefit the development and realisation of the hotly anticipated, and long overdue, consumer version of the Oculus Rift, which can be only a good thing.19/04/2014