The Oculus Rift thing. My immediate reaction on discovering that Facebook had bought Oculus was dismay. With a bit of time, and a bit of reading around, my feeling has had chance to crystalise a bit and its still negative, but not quite so much. Over time my answer to will you buy an Oculus Rift has gone from Yes, if its as good as it claims (heard about it) to Yes, Absolutely yes (after I got to try a dev kit)...and now to maybe (since the news). And the reason is that after I got to try it, I could see this was a technology that had done it. VR genuinely works, and everyone said was made by a company who had the single, simple vision of making VR a thing - while, as a company, it would want to make a profit, I could believe that theyd pursue the ideal product first and profit second. But now thats not necessarily their end goal. Maybe Facebook will keep out the way, and just wants a slice of the pie when it comes to fruition. Maybe theyll look at it and decide that achieving the ideal product and achieving maximum profits are the same destination. But maybe theyll look at it and think they can get more money by doing this, that or the other - and well lose what the Rift could have been in the name of a giant corporation making another few percent. Whats allieviating the worry a bit are those first two points, and especially the first. From the sounds of people who have paid more attention than me, Facebooks acquisition of other tech companies has resulted in a fairly unobtrusive, hand-off operation, so we can hope the same will happen here. And although the founder of Oculuss original statement on Reddit (reddit/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of_vr/) reeks of press release and hence comes with a veneer of cant believe a word of it, his subsequent answering posts (some juicy lines quoted here: time/38366/here-are-7-promises-oculus-has-made-after-getting-bought-by-facebook/, and the article also links to Palmers reddit history, so you can see the full answers hes given) sound much more genuine and positive that theres elements to this we havent heard yet. So with some luck, it may yet all be fine. That said, $2bn - while a stupid large number - is still notably less than WhatsApp got, and that wasnt exactly ground-breaking new tech in the way the Rift is. Although it had the advantage of already being established, it still feels like $2bn is too little (...well, actually it just reiterates the $19bn for WhatsApp was far, far too much). This article is also worth reading if youre interested about the acquisition: blogs.wsj/digits/2014/03/25/oculus-ceo-describes-rapid-sale-to-facebook/
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 01:12:04 +0000
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