Facebook to buy virtual reality firm Oculus VR for $US2bn  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: snoopy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2014, 01:04:28 pm
content: Not bad for an idea that started on KickStarterhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/facebook-to-buy-virtual-reality-firm-oculus-vr-for-us2bn/story-fnay3ubk-1226865137544#FACEBOOK has made its second blockbuster acquisition of the year, agreeing to acquire Oculus VR, a maker of virtual-reality goggles, for $US2 billion in cash and stock.Like Facebook’s $US19 billion purchase last month of text-messaging service WhatsApp, the deal is part of the social-networking company’s vast ambition to connect people across all kinds of devices and modes of communication.The goggle deal also highlights the intense competition among big technology companies for promising start-ups, even when those start-ups, like Oculus and WhatsApp, have little revenue.Oculus’s headset, called Rift, today is a visual device for playing video games. But Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the social network had bigger plans for it.“We’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in statement.“Imagine enjoying a courtside 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,” he said.It’s not clear that consumers agree. So far, they’ve largely shunned fancy headgear that offers improved visuals, for video games and for technologies like 3-D television.Virtual-reality technology has long been criticised for triggering motion sickness in users, a challenge the company has said it is working to solve for its consumer product.Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner who previously spent years developing virtual-reality technology, predicted it will still take Oculus several years to create “really compelling” virtual reality experiences.He was also sceptical of Mr. Zuckerberg’s assertion that Oculus could become the “most social platform ever”.“That line has been the tagline for virtual reality from the beginning but nothing to date has brought that reality,” Mr. Blau said.Oculus, of Irvine, California, was founded in 2012 by Palmer Luckey, now 21 years old, who was home schooled and got his start in tech repairing old Apple iPhones. He later worked as an engineer at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies.Mr. Luckey raised more than $US2.4 million from a Kickstarter campaign to help fund development of the company’s first product.Shortly after, the company hired Brendan Iribe as its CEO. Before working at Oculus, Mr. Iribe had worked at Gaikai, a company that offered customers a technology called “cloud gaming”, which streamed video games over the internet much in the same way Netflix streams movies.That company was purchased by Sony in 2012 for $US380 million and has become a core technology in its PlayStation suite of products.Unlike WhatsApp, which has 450 million users, Oculus isn’t yet available to consumers, and the company hasn’t said when it will be available. It currently sells prototype units to developers for $US350.Mr. Iribe said that Mr. Zuckerberg visited Oculus’s offices in Irvine a few weeks ago.The Facebook CEO said that putting on the glasses was “different from anything I’ve experienced in my life,” he said in his statement.From there, the deal came together “very rapidly,” according to Nabeel Hyatt, partner at Spark Capital, an investor in Oculus.Mr. Hyatt said Facebook is likely to let Oculus operate independently, similar to what it has done with photo-sharing app Instagram and its plans for WhatsApp.“If you look at the pattern of [Zuckerberg’s] last two large acquisitions, I think you can probably see how he is going to handle a team like Oculus,” he said.Oculus has raised more than $90 million from venture capitalists including Spark Capital, Matrix Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Formation 8.Its most recent funding came in December, when internet pioneer Marc Andreessen joined the start-up’s board of directors.Virtual reality “is going to complement the real world in lots of interesting ways,” said Joe Lonsdale, founder of Formation 8 Partners, an early investor of Oculus. The Facebook acquisition plans, he said, “is farsighted on where the world will be in ten to twenty years.”While Facebook brings great resources, it also may worry some developers.Markus Persson, creator of the immensely popular video game Minecraft, said that it was in talks to bring the game to Oculus before the Facebook deal. “I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out,” said Mr Persson on his verified Twitter account.Oculus isn’t alone attempting to build virtual-reality technology. Sony recently unveiled its “Project Morpheus,” a competing headset built to work with its PlayStation 4 video game console.Sony said it chose to unveil the product, which it had been working on for at least two years, after seeing the development efforts being put forth by other game designers for the Oculus headset.In an interview earlier this month, Andrew House, head of Sony’s PlayStation division, described the project as “a work in progress”.Even if Oculus solves its technical challenges, Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities analyst, said, it will also need to recruit more game developers to get a broader user base.“The biggest problem with the technology, is the chicken and egg problem, ” he said. “How will they sell five to 10 million headsets, without lots of really good games?”He said the pairing with Facebook may give Oculus the deep pockets to produce its own games — but that Facebook also lacks game development experience.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 26, 2014, 01:46:23 pm
content: QuoteI was of the understanding that 3D TV's have been completely flop?QuoteThat's cool!

author: FrankenPC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 26, 2014, 05:59:12 pm
content: I had pre-ordered the DK2 Rift. I just canceled my order. IMO Facebook is a blight on the internet. I refuse to fund them in any way.

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 26, 2014, 07:01:10 pm
content: I really don't understand Zuckerberg's "grand plan". He's a lot richer than me, so maybe he's doing something right after all - but $19B for Whatsapp and $2B for Oculus?I can certainly see that WhatsApp is huge, and I think VR (like Oculus) will be a huge thing going forward. But I don't see how Facebook is going to monetize it, or how they fit in AT ALL with what FB does.With Google, they transformed into a tech company with Chrome, Android, Maps, Glass and more. It seems Facebook wants to do the same, but Zuck just has no idea what he's doing and no grand plan or vision, and is just buying stuff he thinks is 'cool'.

author: Macbeth
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2014, 07:55:13 pm
content: I would give 3D VR a go, but as I suffer from amblyopia it's not going to be something I buy before I try. I use a 3D monitor at the moment, but as soon as I put on the 3D glasses all the scan lines appear to halve. Only when I close my dominant eye do I see the other scan lines and lose the others. It is weird. Kind of interesting too, so I don't mind paying the extra £20 for my 3D monitor (AOC e2352Phz)Playing games in 3D - There is a definite 3D effect but the halved FPS is crap, and the "ghosting" which I guess is down to my amblyopia.Overall - even for someone nearly blind in one eye - 3D monitor or TV is interesting, but ultimately a bit of a gimmick. In fact I reckon my eye disorder made it more interesting for me than people with 20/20 vision.I do like the gyro stuff with Oculus, and also Jeri Ellsworth's "Augmented Reality" ideas though. I just hope my shitty left eye can work with them.

author: Macbeth
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2014, 08:47:03 pm
content: Quote from: 3roomlab on March 26, 2014, 08:35:53 pmAhh - yes, I do believe the Japanese shut-ins are rapidly evolving life like tentacles and stuff for, ahem, shoving your dick in.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2014, 11:46:01 pm
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on March 26, 2014, 07:01:10 pmThey are making the next internet bubble. Paying billions of dollars for companies which doesnt make a penny. But as it is said: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I wonder how many people are going to starve to death around the world when the next bubble goes bum.This is the worst thing which could have happened to Oculus. It was supposed to be the next big geek thing, which is awesome. Instead, we can look at advertisement in 3D and be swarmed by 14 year old children posting photos from cats. Oh wait, we wont, because I will not do anything related to fb.

author: CanadianAvenger
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 02:37:05 am
content: I have a wait and see attitude towards this acquisition. But my gut is telling me that this is a misstep for Facebook and Oculus. But hey, Zuckerberg has billions, I don't, so he's obviously a better visionary than I.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 05:24:38 am
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on March 26, 2014, 07:01:10 pmThey don't care, they are just buying because they can, not because they have a good plan with a good chance of success. In fact success and/or return on investment needed be their plan at all.Facebook have an obscene amount of money and they need to spend it in order to keep up appearances that they are doing things and following the market.It's all one big game of charades.

author: minibutmany
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 08:36:45 pm
content: Its nice to see big companies throwing money at these sorts of things, even though twenty percent of children in the US are living below the poverty line.

author: 8086
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 08:53:13 pm
content: Apparently $1.6BN of that is in facebook stock.That Zuckerberg bloke is a smart guy.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 09:29:34 pm
content: At the very least they legitimized CastAR. Yay for Jeri

author: Dongulus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 09:37:04 pm
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on March 26, 2014, 11:46:01 pmIn light of the recent Google shenanigans, I thought the same thing.I don't get this vision:QuoteOkay, this sounds kind of cool, but a the Oculus already gives people motion sickness and a fast paced sports game is probably a terrible idea.QuoteI have no clue what this is supposed to mean. Is he suggesting setting up a virtual classroom with avatars in place of students and teachers? If he his, why would that be better than, say, online courses where teachers record videos and distribute them to the students. Do people need to feel like they're in a classroom to learn?QuoteFace-to-face won't work when one or both parties are wearing goofy goggles over their eyes. Also, Skype already offers that, I don't have any idea why 3D would add any value.I have serious doubts any good will come of this. Zuckerberg's "vision" for a "platform for many other experiences" doesn't seem coherent and it strays way too far away from what Facebook's core business offers.

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 11:23:43 pm
content: Interesting graphic. Facebook and Google's piggishness relative to Amazon and especially Apple is notable.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 11:41:59 pm
content: Quote from: Rasz on March 27, 2014, 09:29:34 pmShe should take the first huge offer that comes along IMO, while the iron is hot.But these things usually go VC first, because, you know, it's ultimately all just a big VC boys club.She is doing VC hunting at the moment, so once that happens, then a big offer will likely come in some time after. Not that a VC offer is not huge anyway, but it's not filthy rich mega-ridiculous nest or oculus-style huge.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 11:50:51 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on March 27, 2014, 11:41:59 pmOops, silly me. Of course, once she takes VC money, then it's not her company any more as she'll have no say in who takes it over and at what price.

author: Orpheus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2014, 02:40:57 pm
content: Perhaps I am just cynical and paranoid, but whenever I see an over-paid takeover like this, I fear that that someone may have seen a patent, application or potential patent in Oculus' or Nest's portfolio that can be overbroadly abused to keep others out of a field (or extort 'cooperative' arrangements).Merely the threat of a lawsuit by a deep pockets corporation, much less one with Facebook's reputation, could be enough to nip a lot of potential competitors in the bud. Few have the discretionary funding to pursue an (always iffy) defense of "prior art" and since the "first to fil" standard took effect last year, it's not even clear how much weight the USPTO and US Federal courts would give that defense. With the increasing "mutual blind eye" unification of intellectual property "rights assignments", other more sensible countries are quite likely to play along.