Facebook purchase Oculus

[Lazybones]

Facebook purchases kick stated VR headset company with a product not yet available to the general public.

Notch tweets that current plans for Oculus support / partnership are now off since Facebook creeps him out.

Razar offers to step in.

And if you didn't know Valve had also been working on VR of their own for a while now. 

[Tom]

I was actually thinking of buying the new version of the headset, I heard good things about it, and really wanted to play with it. But now? I'm just as big of a crank as Notch sometimes. FB == Big No (if I can help it).

A largeish youtube minecrafter has/had the first gen Oculus and someone whipped up a version of minecraft for it, and he decided to play a dropper map with it. Not the brightest idea, but it looked fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJD0giGN6Y

Also looked a bit nauseating. But that's probably due to the low res of the original headset and the rawness of the minecraft port to it.

[Darren Dirt]

Facebook purchases kick stated VR headset company with a product not yet available to the general public.

WTF LEVEL: ASIAN!

Notch tweets that current plans for Oculus support / partnership are now off since Facebook creeps him out.

I'm in solid agreement with this Notch guy.

[Tom]

Our absolute favorite reaction so far, though, would have to be the addition of a new $2 billion stretch goal for the previously covered Frog Fractions 2 Kickstarter: "Buy Oculus back from Facebook."

As seen on Ars.

[Mr. Analog]

Our absolute favorite reaction so far, though, would have to be the addition of a new $2 billion stretch goal for the previously covered Frog Fractions 2 Kickstarter: "Buy Oculus back from Facebook."

As seen on Ars.

Haha

[Lazybones]

http://www.fa-mag.com/news/attention-suckers--please-send-us-all-your-money-17390.html?section=40

?Those almost 10,000 early investors on Kickstarter participated in one of history?s most lucrative funding rounds from the perspective of the people receiving the funding: a $2.4 million early-stage investment in what would become a $2 billion business in a year and a half, in return for 0.0% equity.?

-- WSJ's Corporate Intelligence on Oculus's crowdsourced 2012 fund-raiser.

Using someone else's 2.4 million to make $2 billion is a nice turnaround.

[Mr. Analog]

I know this is going to harm Oculus Rift as it stands, it may harm VR development as a whole if enough people dump their investment into the technology as a whole because of this (Valve?)

But I wonder if it will actually harm Kickstarter itself, I mean the risk has always been there that someone could just get a prototype market for a thing up and running only to sell it to some big company (as we've seen here) but not many people who back projects think stuff like this would happen, but I bet they are thinking it now

[Tom]

You have to wonder why Valve stopped working with Oculus, it almost looked like they might buy them out at some point, then Valve went back to doing its own thing rather mysteriously. Maybe valve wasn't willing to pay Oculus what they wanted

[Lazybones]

You have to wonder why Valve stopped working with Oculus, it almost looked like they might buy them out at some point, then Valve went back to doing its own thing rather mysteriously. Maybe valve wasn't willing to pay Oculus what they wanted

I am guessing there was a discussion stating something like we have an offer of X are you guys still interested and valve when... HELL NO we can develop it our selves.

[Mr. Analog]

You have to wonder why Valve stopped working with Oculus, it almost looked like they might buy them out at some point, then Valve went back to doing its own thing rather mysteriously. Maybe valve wasn't willing to pay Oculus what they wanted

I am guessing there was a discussion stating something like we have an offer of X are you guys still interested and valve when... HELL NO we can develop it our selves.

Especially since they're taking their first steps into the hardware market themselves.

As far as I know there's nothing special about the technology behind the Rift, it's just no one else was building VR anything (that didn't suck) hence the crowdfunding. Now that there might be a market for it they can look at building their own.

[Lazybones]

Looking at the history of notch I think this will be a challenge
http://m.hardocp.com/news/2014/03/27/oculus_hopes_to_win_back_notch_support/#.UzRCB-29LCQ