Why did Facebook buy the creators of Oculus Rift?
Tonight, Mark Zuckerberg announced the purchase of Oculus VR startup for $2 billion. Editorial Office App2Top.ru She told why Facebook needs virtual reality glasses, as well as what John Carmack thinks about the deal.
In his letter published on Facebook, Mark made it clear why the social network needed a virtual reality helmet.
We have identified three key theses from his address, giving a detailed explanation of what happened:
Point one:
“… we are in a position where we can start working with those platforms that will soon become relevant…“
In other words, Facebook wants to “score” the potential next “blue ocean”, a completely new market that may turn the entire IT industry upside down.
Point two:
“We’re going to help Oculus create its own product and develop relationships to support more games.”
Based on this, we can conclude: now the social network will take over the business development of “points”. Moreover, most likely, Facebook will integrate Oculus Rift support into its SDK. There are already enough three-dimensional projects on the platform now. And over time, they will only get more: no one has canceled the close cooperation between Facebook and Unity.
There are such projects on Facebook – on the Contract Wars screenshotPoint three:
“After the games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for any other activity.”
That is, if earlier the Oculus Rift gadget was nothing more than a tool for deeper immersion in games, then in the foreseeable future it will probably become a self-sufficient console with a Facebook-based subsystem.
We should not forget the following important point, not mentioned in Mark’s letter: Facebook’s main source of income today is advertising. Having formed a new market, the social network wants to become a monopolist of advertising on it.
An advertisement broadcast directly into your eyes, an advertisement that you can’t turn away from – it’s so tempting!
You can’t escape from advertising in virtual reality anymoreThe question remains, however, is Facebook going to compete or cooperate with Google in the field of virtual reality glasses?
Oculus developers will receive $400 million in their hands, plus another 23.1 million shares of Facebook.
Developers’ reaction
After the deal between Facebook and Oculus Rift, Markus Persson (Markus “Notch” Persson) refused to adapt Minecraft for virtual reality glasses. According to him, he wants to make games, not work on social chips for the game.
In turn, John Carmack, the current technical director of Oculus VR, noted that nothing has changed for him. Now he’s sitting and coding, just like a week ago. Plus, he believes that cooperation with Facebook will allow the team to avoid a crisis while increasing the scale of the Oculus VR business.
For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week.I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) 26 March 2014What do you think about all this?
Photo: http://techcrunch.comFacebook is the most popular social network in the world.
It was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. Its MAU at the moment is about 1.23 billion.Oculus VR is a startup founded by Palmer Luckey, Brendan Iribe, Nate Mitchell and Mikhail Antonov.
The startup received the first money to create Oculus Rift virtual reality glasses – $2.4 million – with the help of a crowdfunding service Kickstarter. Then about $90 million more was invested in it. In 2013, the company’s technical director was the creator of Doom John Carmack, and in March 2014, the social network Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $ 2 billion.
