Having known Alex in college, it's crazy to me to see how far he's come. I just remember him as the chill guy who smoked me in Halo worse than I ever had been ever. All I have to say is what a great guy he is and that if anyone is deserving of this, he is. He is a hard worker and has a vision - they are very important attributes to have to achieve at that level.
Just last month, Google also (acqui)hired the Soundstage VR developer: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/7/15216720/soundstage-vr-developer-logan-olson-joins-google" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/7/15216720/soundstage-vr-dev...</a>
Having met Alex (founder/CEO @ Owlchemy) a year ago, this strikes me as a no-brainer. Owlchemy has put in the time and work to start to develop a new language for the new medium that is VR. They are not just porting over old tropes to a new platform. When I met Alex, he explained his vision as wanting to continue to create this new language, and to sell devtools that would help other folks build VR-first experiences. Congrats, folks!
The Owlchemy Labs blog post about the acquisition is pretty informative about the history of Owlchemy. The parts referencing the acquisition are pretty standard.<p><a href="http://owlchemylabs.com/owlchemy-labs-and-google-join-forces/" rel="nofollow">http://owlchemylabs.com/owlchemy-labs-and-google-join-forces...</a>
The company knows how to make great VR experiences but this is a bizarre move by Google. Historically, they've not been great in the game space (look at Ingress, or does anybody remember Lively.com)? I suppose you could argue this is their response to that but its not clear what their end goal is here (more exclusive content)?
Hopeful about having more Daydream content, as well as content for other VR setups.<p>(Though what I'd really like is a Tilt-Brush, even a "lite" version, on a next gen Pixel or PSVR,
On the upside, this is great news for them - congratulations!<p>On the downside, I fear it means that their Mixed Reality plugin for Unity (which looks awesome, and I've been waiting impatiently for) will be a long time coming now :(
We changed the URL from <a href="https://blog.google/products/google-vr/welcoming-owlchemy-labs-google/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.google/products/google-vr/welcoming-owlchemy-la...</a> to one with a little more information.