Facebook acquires virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift for $2bn
Facebook has acquired virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift VR for $2bn, a purchase the social network says will help it expand the platform to new experiences beyond gaming.
Facebook has acquired virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift VR for /Pictures/web/a/w/x/oculus-rift-460-201_460.jpgbn.
Oculus Rift VR’s flagship product is the Oculus Rift headset, which has been on display at various technology trade shows over the past year. It allows users to experience the full gaming environment by sending “immersive” images to screens placed inside wearable goggles.
The start-up company was founded in 2012 and has raised about $75m in funding from investors and a further $2.4m from crowd funding website Kickstarter. The headset is not yet available to consumers but last week Oculus began taking orders on a new developer kit to allow more developers to create compatible software to use with the device.
In a statement released last night Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company wants to make Oculus a platform for other experiences beyond gaming such as “enjoying a court side seat at a game”, studying in a classroom or to create a virtual reality doctor’s consultation.
He adds: “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.”
In the UK, mobile operator and England Rugby sponsor O2 has started experimenting using Oculus Rift to create an immersive behind-the-scenes set up on match days.
In the immediate future Facebook plans to “accelerate” Oculus’ existing moves to create virtual reality gaming experiences by helping the start-up build its product and develop partnerships.
Facebook says Oculus will continue to operate independently to achieve this.
The acquisition is the latest attempt by Facebook to gain a foothold in the gaming space. In a conference call following the acquisition announcement Zuckerberg said about 40 per cent of the time people spend online is spent gaming, while 40 per cent is on social. “You need to fuse both of those together,” he added.
While many users do use Facebook to play games, 90.7 per cent of Facebook’s revenue was generated by advertising in its fourth quarter and just 9.3 per cent from payments – such as for virtual goods within games – and other fees.
Sales of video games are set to grow 10 per cent globally in 2014 to $62.2bn, according to Strategy Analytics’ Video Games Forecast, highlighting the opportunity Facebook has seen to enter a growing and lucrative vertical.
However, the Facebook acquisition – a deal that includes $400m in cash and more than 23 million Facebook shares – has drawn scorn from some of the gaming community.
Creator of the popular building game Minecraft, Mojang founder Markus Pearson took to Twitter shortly after the acquisition was revealed last night to announce the company had just cancelled a deal to bring the game to Oculus. He added: “Facebook creeps me out”.
Early Oculus Rift VR investors have also been unsettled by the deal, with some on the project’s Kickstarter comment page asking for their original pledges back.
One investor, John Wolf, wrote: “I would have NEVER given a single cent of my money to Oculus if I had known you were going to sell out to Facebook. You sold all of us out. I hope this backfires horribly for Oculus and Facebook. I will personally discourage absolutely anyone I know from buying what was once an indie dream and is now a soulless corporate cash cow. God, I want a refund so badly.”
Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus Rift VR comes little over a month after it paid $19bn to acquire free messaging app WhatsApp.
Facebook is discontinuing the Oculus Rift S
Skip to main content
The VergeThe Verge logo.
The Verge homepage
The VergeThe Verge logo.
- Oculus/
- Tech/
/
The new Quest 2 can connect to a PC
By Adi Robertson / @thedextriarchy
|
Share this story
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus is ending sales of the Rift S headset next spring. It’s retiring the PC-based VR device to focus on the standalone Oculus Quest 2, which can also be tethered to a computer through Oculus’ Link feature.
Quest 2 product manager Prabhu Parthasarathy calls the Quest 2’s release “the right moment for us to move to a single headset.” Link, which uses a USB-C cable to support PC VR games on the Quest, was launched experimentally for the original Quest in 2019. The feature will emerge from beta later this year, officially making the $299 Quest 2 a dual-purpose headset.
The Quest 2 is officially convertible
The Quest 2 will connect to PCs through the same Oculus app as the Rift. And Parthasarathy says Oculus will keep supporting PC-based VR as a distinct platform from the standalone Quest system. That includes supporting the Rift for the near future. “The old Rift is something people continue to use and enjoy,” Parthasarathy acknowledges. The Rift S will also continue to support logging in with a non-Facebook Oculus account until 2023, unlike the new Quest 2, which requires a Facebook login.
Facebook promoted the Quest as its primary VR headset last year, leaving the Rift S out of upgrades like controller-free hand tracking. Oculus has maintained for years that the Rift line is a “gold standard” for playing high-end PC games. But the Rift S — a successor to the original 2016 Oculus Rift — came with compromises, including lenses with no focus adjustment. Facebook recently discontinued its Oculus Go headset, and a Rift retirement isn’t necessarily surprising.
It is, however, the end of an era. Kickstarter backers pledged nearly $2.5 million toward the original Oculus Rift prototype in 2012, launching a boom in consumer VR. Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 and turned the Rift into a high-end device that competed with Valve and HTC’s Vive headset and Sony’s PlayStation VR.
These companies’ paths have diverged since 2016. HTC has catered to specialty and business markets with its Vive Pro system, although it also produced the Cosmos headset for home gaming. Valve released its own PC VR gold standard, the $999 Index headset, last year. And Sony has coasted on strong early sales of its PSVR, offering little detail about a new headset that might work with the upcoming PlayStation 5.
The Rift S is joining the discontinued Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR
Meanwhile, Oculus has released a string of headsets experimenting with different form factors and feature sets. That included the Samsung Gear VR, a plastic shell that fit around a smartphone to create a cheap mobile VR headset, as well as the Oculus Go, a fully self-contained headset that didn’t include motion controllers or allow users to walk around.
The Rift launched with an Xbox gamepad, but it soon added full-fledged motion controllers called Oculus Touch, following the lead of HTC’s Vive.
The Quest, first announced as “Santa Cruz” in 2017, offered what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called “the key attributes of the ideal VR system.” It also marked a push to make VR cheap and accessible to a mass market, something that was difficult to do with a PC-based system. Last year, Oculus released its second-generation Rift, the Rift S, but it was more of an upgrade than a full generational shift, incorporating key Quest features like self-contained, inside-out camera tracking.
The Rift S’s retirement may push some PC VR enthusiasts toward the Valve Index, HTC Vive Cosmos, or upcoming HP Reverb G2 headsets. These headsets don’t require Facebook integration and have unique benefits like Valve’s “knuckles” controllers and the Reverb G2’s high-resolution display.
But Facebook is banking on the fact that those devices cost substantially more and won’t offer access to Oculus’ storefront.
“We think that Quest 2 is the best of both worlds when it comes to VR experiences,” says Parthasarathy.
Most Popular
-
The best Black Friday 2022 deals you can get
-
The best Black Friday streaming deals on Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, and more
-
Elon Musk says Twitter will begin manually authenticating Blue, Grey, and Gold accounts as soon as next week
-
Peloton Row review: the price isn’t right
-
The best Black Friday gaming deals
-
Facebook Connect 7: the 5 biggest announcements
-
Oculus Quest vs. Oculus Quest 2: what’s the difference?
-
VR Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell games are coming
-
The original Myst is coming to VR
10/29/2021 [12:39],
Ruslan Avdeev
Meta* (Facebook* before rebranding) has abandoned a highly unpopular decision made last year. Users of Oculus VR headsets will not need to log in with Facebook* to access most features.
engadget.com
According to Meta* CTO Andrew Bosworth, who told reporters about the significance of the rebrand for the company, Facebook* authorization is not required to use the Oculus Quest ecosystem.
In August 2020, Facebook* announced that all Oculus headset owners will be required to sign in to the social networking account when using their devices.
At the same time, the company said that from October 2020, the company will encourage people to merge their Facebook* and Oculus accounts. As previously announced, Oculus owners were able to continue using their headsets without a Facebook account until January 1, 2023*. After that, as the company warned, the electronics will continue to work, but some games and applications will not be available.
This decision immediately sparked protests from the Oculus owner community. Recent events and revelations have taken a huge toll on Facebook*’s image, so the company appears to have decided not to escalate any further confrontation with its target audience.
* Included in the list of public associations and religious organizations in respect of which a court has made a final decision to liquidate or ban activities on the grounds provided for by Federal Law No. 114-FZ of 25.07.2002 «On counteracting extremist activity.»
Source:
If you notice an error, select it with the mouse and press CTRL+ENTER.
Related materials
Permanent URL:
Hardware news, audio/video peripherals, headphones, webcams, IT market, IT industry events and events, exhibitions, forums, high-tech interesting things, development and production of electronics, wearable electronics,Tags:
me, ff, oculus, oculus quest← В
past
To the future →Facebook bought the creators of Oculus Rift virtual reality glasses for $2 billion
Technologies
Vadim Elistratov
Facebook has acquired virtual reality glasses creator Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Mark Zuckerberg announced this on his personal page on the social network.
Of the $2 billion, Oculus VR owners will receive only $400 million in cash, with the rest paid out in the form of 23.1 million Facebook shares.
In a post on the social network, Zuckerberg noted that the company does not plan to change the gaming focus of Oculus VR, but, on the contrary, will help its Oculus Rift virtual reality glasses get maximum support from developers.
Oculus’ mission is to enable people to experience the impossible. This technology opens the way to completely new types of experiences. Dive into games will be the start: Oculus already has big plans in this area, and we’re not going to get in the way of them, we hope to speed them up. The Rift is indeed highly anticipated in the gaming community, and there is significant interest from developers in using the platform. Mark Zuckerberg
The head of Facebook also notes that after Oculus VR fulfills its ambitions in the gaming industry, the social network plans to expand the scope of Oculus Rift, making these glasses a platform for many «virtual experiences». As an example, he cites going to school, doctor or sporting events.
The Verge notes that the deal came as a surprise to all market players. On March 19, Oculus VR unveiled the second version of its dev kit at the GDC Developers Conference, which was warmly received by the press mainly due to the new 1080p screen (the previous version had a 720p display).
And three months before that, the company received an investment of $75 million. The acquisition of Oculus VR joins a string of major acquisitions by Facebook over the past few years. In April 2012, the company bought the Instagram service for $1 billion, and on February 20, 2014, it acquired the WhatsApp messenger for $16 billion. In addition, the social network has recently regularly bought small startups, including companies working in the fields of speech recognition and mobile analytics.
The market for virtual reality glasses has recently become particularly active. 19In March, Sony announced its release, which presented a prototype of such a device for its PlayStation 4 game console. On November 19, the media reported that the gaming company Valve plans to introduce its own virtual reality glasses, but later it denied this information, announcing its desire to support Oculus Rift.
Oculus Rift is based on a small display, divided into two parts by a partition.
