Facebook Buying Oculus VR For $2 Billion

teh_chem said:
No promises are made, just presentation of ideas.

Also, explain to me where being purchased means their ideas won't come to fruition. Are you a member of the Facebook or OR boards?
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Explain to me why being purchased is anything but a death sentence? Remember what happened to Maxis? Or BioWare? Or NewEgg?....Do I need to keep going with tech examples of buyouts that end in death for the purchased IP/company?
 
teh_chem said:
No, the bigger picture; the Instagram business was left unchanged in its operation. Where did I say that the technology wouldn't continue to advance? The OR purchase payout has business performance based requirements. That sounds to me like the core business and technology is understood to continue as planned.

To all you folk who are now sore on Kickstarter; what do you expect? You're not investors. You don't own any of the tech and the creators don't owe you a penny. You choose to DONATE to an idea you believe in. Please, anyone, prove that the OR technology idea is dead or even bound to diverge from core ideas just because fb bought them. A sensible justification, please, not some bullshit anti-fb for the sake of being anti-fb reason.
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The problem is that most of those people would not have helped fund this project if they knew that Oculus would be sold to Facebook. Now they just feel sore and betrayed. I personally think it's just a growing pain for young Oculus and they will be just fine. People tend to overreact these days.
 
Dawill said:
You are not an investor if you are a kickstarter. Sorry to break it to you. But where do they agree to give you ownership of the company? I'm sure their private investors gave money for partial ownership in the company. The kickstarters were buying a a dev kit or some other product. I'm not investing into Target when I buy something from them. I think a lot of the kickstarter people making a big deal of this are a little naive.

It's business, get over it and move on. Every single person on this board would have taken the money.
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Oculus and Kickstarter lost credibility with this acquisition. It shows. You may be in denial, but why would you ever invest in a start up if you knew they were just going to sell out to a company with a different agenda than yours. For the money, that is a lot of money but integrity has more value than money. I hate to say it I hope this whole idea flops based on everything that has just happened. To some this was a chance that this would have come to fruition, people invested because they didn't want greedy corporations to get their hands on it, if they were smart 2 billion dollars could have been chump change.

In the end, perhaps Oculus still takes off, Kickstarter and crowd funding will never be the same. This is the damage that has been done. Sure you can make sense of why it did happen. Hope is now lost that something like this could emerge from these projects without us funding ideas. For corporations to come in a scoop up ideas that you not only pay into but, now corporations come in buy you out, not that they owe you something physical or compensate you. They should be held to a standard that doesn't give you a different product in the end. What basically failed is the idea that you can help fund something without being blindsided. Where is the confidence in funding something in the future?
 
Krenum said:
I wonder what Gabe Newell's reaction is to this?
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We reached out to Gabe for his impression on this acquisition:

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xX326Xx said:
but why would you ever invest in a start up if you knew they were just going to sell out to a company with a different agenda than yours.
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The goal of virtually every startup is to be purchased.

Being purchased brings so many more opportunities than begging for donors or capital investors can bring. It allows the business to focus on critical to qualify issues as opposed to doing x, y, z because they bring a few dollars in to keep the business going. I think anyone who has worked for a startup, especially under lean times, understands this.
 
The whole point of crowd funding from a supporter point of view is that you are helping the little guy. On the receiver side, your a little guy who does not want big investors to push your design in a certain direction. Now that Oculus has been acquired by FB, their is no way they can maintain the same freedom of direction they had previously. Putting my personal feelings aside (yes i took this personally because i was really really exited about the Oculus VR) This could allow Oculus to provide a superior product at a low cost to many more consumers than before and that is a plus. But that is the problem, many liked the thought of buying something that was cutting edge and pushing the tech envelope. Now the best we can hope for is a product that has some remnants of what we envisioned in this little start up that could. Instead of a globo-FB-VR advertising, life tracking social networking device that we all think/know its going to be.
 
teh_chem said:
The goal of virtually every startup is to be purchased.

Being purchased brings so many more opportunities than begging for donors or capital investors can bring. It allows the business to focus on critical to qualify issues as opposed to doing x, y, z because they bring a few dollars in to keep the business going. I think anyone who has worked for a startup, especially under lean times, understands this.
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Purchased by Facebook though...?

Oculus Rift was like a normally scheduled Flight MH370 going from Malaysia to Beijing...

Oculus-Facebook is like turning south after an hour and crashing into the Indian Ocean a few hours later.
 
teh_chem said:
The goal of virtually every startup is to be purchased.

Being purchased brings so many more opportunities than begging for donors or capital investors can bring. It allows the business to focus on critical to qualify issues as opposed to doing x, y, z because they bring a few dollars in to keep the business going. I think anyone who has worked for a startup, especially under lean times, understands this.
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"The point" only if you are the CEO looking to bank your retirement overnight.

If you're the consumer it sure as hell is not.
 
Skripka said:
Explain to me why being purchased is anything but a death sentence? Remember what happened to Maxis? Or BioWare? Or NewEgg?....Do I need to keep going with tech examples of buyouts that end in death for the purchased IP/company?
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LOL, Maxis was already doing themselves in before EA bought them. Their poor performance outside of SimCity led them to the point of acquisition because their value (and funding) plummeted. BioWare is a quasi-valid example; then again, EA doesn't have a decent track record of focus when it comes to buying other game developers or publishers; very hit and miss. But is EA buying OR? No... Although FB is younger, where are all of these indications that they are going to drive the tech into the ground? On the contrary, they seem to buy technologies because of their inherent values and promise, not because they want to buy out competing No one is giving evidence outside of their own hate for FB the entity...

And what about NewEgg? They tried to and unsuccessfully IPO'd, and have never been acquired. So I don't understand what company you're implying ran NewEgg into the ground...???

TheMadHatterXxX said:
Purchased by Facebook though...?

Oculus Rift was like a normally scheduled Flight MH370 going from Malaysia to Beijing...

Oculus-Facebook is like turning south after an hour and crashing into the Indian Ocean a few hours later.
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Again, why? I understand everyone likes to hate on Facebook--don't get me wrong, I don't like FB; I generally don't care about FB anymore. But what no one can rationally indicate is what is so bad about the prospects for OR, outside of their distaste for FB as a whole. I'll indicate again back to Instagram. Purchased, and generally left alone to guide their own business segment. Some FB integration, but the basic technology and service is just as it was before FB bought them. From what has been released about the OR purchase, it sounds like FB wants them to continue on with their general business and tech goals, with large amounts of performance-based compensation riding on it.
 
teh_chem said:
Where did I say that the technology wouldn't continue to advance?
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Awww, I was just poking fun at ya, I know what you meant... ;)

still, there is always the possibility OR will dissolve or not release before some other big solution wins the hearts of the mainstream. There is always that risk though, but you can imagine why some folks think that under another big company the interest/drive may be diminished.

Even Carmack stated there is a "hunger" in Oculus to produce because all their livelihoods depend on it. Now they are probably more comfortable and maybe not as driven.

This is one of the big reasons why folks are upset, because we've seen this happen time and time again in history, these smaller companies being bought up and then losing their luster.

We will see... if anything it is fun to watch :cool:
 
Youn said:
Awww, I was just poking fun at ya, I know what you meant... ;)

still, there is always the possibility OR will dissolve or not release before some other big solution wins the hearts of the mainstream. There is always that risk though, but you can imagine why some folks think that under another big company the interest/drive may be diminished.

Even Carmack stated there is a "hunger" in Oculus to produce because all their livelihoods depend on it. Now they are probably more comfortable and maybe not as driven.

This is one of the big reasons why folks are upset, because we've seen this happen time and time again in history, these smaller companies being bought up and then losing their luster.

We will see... if anything it is fun to watch :cool:
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Ah, gotcha!
Disregard what I said then. :)
 
I hope this isnt like HP Palm all over again!
All they wanted was the patents and after all was said and done, they sold the left over carcass to LG and the most elegant mobile OS/UI now resides in smart TV's.
Sad, very sad.
 
cptnjarhead said:
I hope this isnt like HP Palm all over again!
All they wanted was the patents and after all was said and done, they sold the left over carcass to LG and the most elegant mobile OS/UI now resides in smart TV's.
Sad, very sad.
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Prior to the new ceo that took over during that acquisition their main goal was the os since they wanted a break in the mobile market but all they had was CE. at the time.
 
Trimlock said:
Prior to the new ceo that took over during that acquisition their main goal was the os since they wanted a break in the mobile market but all they had was CE. at the time.
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Yes, until Leo stepped in. The deal was, they get an influx of cash and have 3 years to turn things around. But they killed the deal early. I still think HP only wanted the patents and never really wanted to go into the cellphone business.
I wonder what qualcomm is doing though?

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/23/qualcomm-acquires-palm-other-patent-portfolios-from-hp/
 
Has Palmer responded to the outcry over the Kickstarter 'investors' who feel 'cheated'? I'm very interested in his response to this
 
If you want an overall opinion from Notch about Facebook , Oculus and VR in general I HIGHLY recommend reading this blog from Notch.

To get to the meat of his ire over Facebook.

Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts. Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers. People have made games for Facebook platforms before, and while it worked great for a while, they were stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build.
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Terrible news.
The complete opposite direction expected from the Oculus Rift people.
They must have been broke and greedy to make this move.
 
Alright so, I haven't heard one way or the other and there are other youtube vids posted here. I hesitated to post because I didn't want it to come across as advertising. So basically here is a Vlog I did earlier on the whole VR movement and the purchase by Facebook. While I have long been known as an opponent to VR from a gaming perspective, I do support it in other functions and feel the facebook think might not be as bad as it is cracked up. Obviously I could be wrong. But here is me going a bit more in depth on this whole thing, far more than I could in a post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snGDB8OTySY

Agree with me, disagree with me it doesn't matter. It is something we all feel strongly about and obviously should be discussed.
 
I think peoples opinions would be totally different if there was some kind of return from Kickstarter funding. As it is, they helped create this project out of a dream, it grew and got investors and then got bought up (and the key here is, not "out"). Palmer Luckey and John Carmack are still there, most dangerous element to me, the "venture capitalists" are gone and now you have Facebook (which could still honestly go either way).
 
OK, I did not mean to post that, I was still building my thoughts out and just brainstormed and accidentally hit post. "Venture Capitalist" might not be accurate for the post kickstarter investors, but they were interested in making a buck.
 
Zuckerburg has proved me wrong so far... I'm gonna quit making predictions that his shit will fail and just not care anymore. I honestly never really thought the rift would come this far, either so I'm just going to grab some popcorn and wait to see if a product I can purchase at a store will arrive or not before deciding if it will be worth buying.
 
RangerXML said:
I think peoples opinions would be totally different if there was some kind of return from Kickstarter funding. As it is, they helped create this project out of a dream, it grew and got investors and then got bought up (and the key here is, not "out"). Palmer Luckey and John Carmack are still there, most dangerous element to me, the "venture capitalists" are gone and now you have Facebook (which could still honestly go either way).
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A small minority is whining about kickstarter funding. Red herring. If Valve had purchase Oculus VR there would be a parade and streamers, nobody - NOBODY would be complaining about being owed a return on kickstarter funding.

The real core of the backlash is that its Facebook, aka "the right arm of the NSA" to many minds. Really, any company that is mining and reselling personal data as their core business would've been met with a similar response. Its not like there isn't precedent for megacorp coming along and buying up little guy, ripping out the organs it wants for its own agenda and throwing the rest of the body away. That's why the backlash.

"But Instagram didnt change after FB bought it" is a naive argument because it didn't need to change, it was already a social media platform, slurped by the same people that use Facebook. Zuck tried to change the ToS in the middle of the night to sell photos without permission to third parties, there was backlash and so they settled for just usage and profile data warehousing and reselling. People have short memories apparently but the true colors were revealed a little more after that episode.
 
Well, yeah, a company that serves games instead of personal data would have been more in line with the product involved. EA could have purchased it with less less grumbling, well maybe not EA LOL. I doubt there would have been too many complaints if a medical imaging co., or an architectural/engineering group were to get involved. But a complete buyout by a data miner scares the shit out of me. If it comes out tomorrow with support for a hundred games I want to play, I would not buy it now. I would assume that it would be used to data mine, and even if they did not at first, I would assume a 2AM TOS change that allowed it later on.
 
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