<i>> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive.</i><p><i>> If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are.</i><p>The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general -- should have nothing to do with Oculus' vision.<p>Gamers cared about Oculus and Rift because they felt Oculus was innovating in the interest of gaming as a whole. But being bought out by Facebook makes it seem that Oculus is "selling out" to someone that is historically more interested in monopolizing innovation than they are in gaming, or at least the type of gaming that Oculus was originally innovating towards.<p>It's hard for many to see anything under the umbrella of Facebook doing a service to gaming -- look at the direction social gaming has taken us.<p>This is how I see it, in my admittedly limited view, anyway. And since the views of those "beyond their core community" are likely similarly limited, it makes sense that others may have a similar reaction.<p>So I'm baffled how Oculus is surprised by the reaction.
First off, they should've expected that reaction if they sold to <i>anyone</i>, because:<p>#1 it was too early, and they still had a lot of investment money<p>#2 they've implied many times that they wouldn't sell. I don't remember if they said it directly, but they certainly made it seem that way<p>#3 they basically decided to sell the company "overnight". That took everyone by surprise, and it made the move extremely suspicious (personally, I still think Mark Andreessen forced the decision, and Oculus was more like "ok, well I guess that could work", rather than enthusiastically try to sell the company themselves, prior to that)<p>#4 Facebook seems like one of the worst companies that could've bought Oculus, and no one would've even <i>dreamed</i> that would ever happen, from the community. A lot of people were like "WTF? Is this a joke?" when they heard it. And it's one of the worst, not just because people hated it for being so privacy-intrusive, but also because there's no connection between Oculus and Facebook, and usually when the cultures and visions are very different, the acquisition fails.<p>I don't believe them when they say they really din't expect the reaction to Facebook buying them. If they didn't maybe they aren't paying much attention to what's happening in the tech community lately. I think Oculus could've only done worse than Facebook if they would've been bought by Oracle.
They're not actually that dumb, right?<p>"According to Mitchell, the company’s current goal is to educate people about the merge and why it is a good thing. He thinks this is working since the negativity is finally starting to cool down."<p>I assume this "gee, we had no idea there would be this reaction" thing is a subtle part of that education campaign.
Yeah well, I don't buy this.<p>However, I think Oculus could easily kill any doubts over that aquisition by promising to release an open source driver.<p>Because that would mean that even if the Rift universe they built is beeing crapped on by like buttions, there's still the option to build an alternative open source universe using the open source driver.<p>Personally I think that would restore my faith in the Rift.
Many people view Facebook policies as creepy and unethical, that is probably driving this negative response. We don't know where mainstream VR will take us in ten years, but we do know that there have been many assaults to our privacy and we don't want to create another keyhole into our private lives.
I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it.<p>Instagram definitely has location and social graph data to exploit.<p>But Oculus? What is FB going to do with that?<p>I think most people still think of FB as the site and advertising sales for the site.<p>But if you see FB as a conglomerate like Google, Apple, and Sony then it makes more sense. FB is diversifying, buying up promising technology with the hopes of leveraging new markets out of it.<p>Maybe they want to make the Gameboy of wearable gaming? They have had success in working with gaming companies (Zynga and King might have peaked, but FB still made money.) And they certainly have a enough power to make things happen.
Strangely, they understand why people would be angry about selling out to Microsoft or Sony (which frankly, are far more legitimate platforms than Facebook. IE: Oculus on XBox or Oculus on PS4 would be great). However, selling out to a large company is almost always going to be seen as a negative when you bill yourself as an "indie company".<p>Facebook on the other hand, is facing a huge amount of negativity as well. Their stock price dropped by 15% this past week, as investors don't understand the purchase at all.
> “We assumed that the reaction would be negative, especially from our core community. Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. I don’t think we expected it to be so negative.”<p>So basically <i></i>*k the core community? What Oculus founders don't understand is that without this core community they wouldn't have existed in the way they are right now, probably not even approached by Facebook or anyone else.<p>Sure, it could be good to the future of Oculus, what do I know, but it's a big FU to the core community, specially that we've been disregarded like this.
I've been thinking about this Facebook acquisition for a little while, and in my mind, the only play that makes sense for Facebook is to become the login gateway to Oculus games.<p>For many Windows games, there's Windows Live...a social-ish, login service that you literally <i>have</i> to register and sign in with in order to play the game. You cannot opt out. If Facebook became this... "Sign in with Facebook"... for all commercial Oculus games, they would have a guaranteed mindshare on the future younger generations of gamers.<p>And becoming just the gatekeepers would more or less let them be hands-off with the actual Oculus direction as a company, which is in line with what's been said so far.
In the final analysis, deeds define you and your company, not words.<p>Oculus sold to Facebook. Fine. Oculus doesn't have to fundraise anymore, and has a theoretically unlimited R&D budget. Facebook has the cloud expertise to handle virtual worlds at scale. These are valid reasons to be acquired.<p>But more fundamentally, there are a variety of large corporations with big pockets that could have done the merger.<p>Facebook's interest will be in jamming the virtual world <i>full</i> of ads and mining the smallest action to increase ad sales. And everyone understands this and knows this. Google's interest would have been similar, but perhaps skewed towards AR and Glass integration. Microsoft would have <i>likely</i> skewed towards selling corporate VR solutions (these exist(ed) already, but have not gotten press or wide adoption). MSNBC or other media corp would have wanted more to sell talking heads and ads. Etc.<p>I don't much care about the gamer community here, but I really wouldn't want the VR world to be a 3d representation of Facebook (something I fled years ago).
I don't think Mozilla expected the backlash this week either.<p>Hundreds of thousands of people with very rapid ways to share opinions (Hacker News, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) equals a very different scene to that of even 10 years ago.
Kickstarter is all about directly funding unique concepts and products by independent entities. The whole point is to avoid the "traditional" investment model. Or I suppose more accurately, fund what the "traditional model" wants nothing to do with.<p>If I was a backer, I would probably want the Oculus to fail now, just out of spite.
At least to me, the issue is more that Facebook is not who I want developing these technologies.<p>I think facebook is going to eventually use this to create a modern connected virtual world. Which is something I dearly want. I just don't want it controlled by facebook.<p>In the short term I don't think facebook will screw Oculus up, however.
One thing I don't get is why did it have to be acquisition. If FB had just acquired 10-30% of the company at 2G$ valuation and left control to the other people they would have had once again first class access to the technology but the backlash would have been smaller.<p>Acquiring stake validates the technology. Buy outs - they mean you try to lock the other away from it.
Facebook is right in the middle of pissing off just about everyone with a FB page, and Oculus is all excited about advancing VR by pairing with Facebook. Seriously, a simple geek campaign like "let's call it the Facebook Oculus from now on" would probably have a good chance at destroying the project. It's not that I personally have anything against either FB or Oculus, but it seems like a huge business risk to everyone involved. The one point that sticks out as a plus is the "this will advance VR no matter what" point. You can safely bet (probably) that this will contribute to the future of VR.
Maybe if you replace "Facebook" with "Walmart" the comparison will be easier. Because that's what FB is, the Walmart of the Internet. It sucks and it could be so much better, but it's packed with "content" and everyone still goes there reluctantly. When you have high hopes for a new player in the game the last thing you want is them buddying up to a company whos whole strategy can be summed up as "find the lowest common denominator".<p>Is this judgement a fair assessment? Of course not. Facebook is just our whipping boy.
Facebook have lost 7% share value since the announcement, that's $10bn off the market cap.<p><a href="http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/facebook-share-price-continues-to-fall/0130265" rel="nofollow">http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/facebook-share-price-continue...</a>
I guess for me:<p>A) Doesn't seem to make sense whats Facebook going to do with such a device? They don't do gaming, manufacturing, or design.<p>B) I for one am not happy with Facebook presently, they've morphed their great community/communication platform into a frustrating ad-pushing machine that will only let you interact with your community/friends at a an increasing price.<p>C) Given those two, I can only shudder at what Oculus Facebook will become.
I don't think Facebook's acquisition of Oculus has much to do with gaming. I think what it does is give Facebook access to a part of our minds that few others may have. What we look at ... whether in a real world or a virtual one ... reveals what we covet. Perhaps it's something we'd never search for in a search-engine - but it is able to be leveraged to enhance the profile of a person in order to more-perfectly market to them. I suspect that what we look at, and for how long, will convert far better than anything we ever type into a Google search box. It's why Google is building Glass ... and why Facebook bought Oculus.
You don't even have to hate facebook to not like the merger. Anyone that has been part of a big corporate merger knows that the small company will very rarely keep its old culture for very long. Being bought changes things, and it rarely makes the company more productive. In all my years in the industry, I've not been a part of one where the consumer was helped: The only winners have always been the few people that got the millions from being acquired.<p>Not every acquisition like this is a total failure, but so many of them are, it's very hard to see any acquisition with optimism, unless you want both sides to fail. Can IBM please buy Oracle?
I don't get why everyone is hating. The fact of the matter is Facebook is about to put a lot of funding in to Oculus. With a lot of other big companies getting in to VR right now, like Sony and apparently Microsoft, Oculus will need that to stay relevant.<p>When I first found out about the buyout I thought of the same thing this article points out; Facebook also purchased Instagram and it seems to be doing just fine. If Facebook truly lets Oculus "be who they are going to be", I'm sure they will do just fine.
I don't use Facebook and I don't play games, but I'm curious to see if the acquisition will have a positive effect on pure VR; meaning the kind of VR Jaron Lanier talks about.<p>It seems like FB could actually bridge between VR, AR, and everyone else more easily than most. I can imagine attending the next presidential inauguration (virtually) because of this deal, and that wouldn't have been the case with Valve, for example.
If they sold to Valve, the reaction would have been different. But it's all initial impression.<p>We'll see long term how it shakes out. I do admit it seemed odd to me that Facebook would be the buyer. I just don't see the connection.
I think the real victim here is Kickstarter. I saw some project for a new kind of energy-saving device and all the comments basically said "So you'll just take our money and sell to Facebook?"
tl;dr: People who react negatively are dumb and ignorant, and need to be "eductated".<p>Suddenly I understand much clearer how Facebook and Oculus are a good cultural match.
Two words: Google Glass.<p>Maybe they are the kinds of people who are excited about something like Google Glass, and who just don't see what bothers people about Facebook?
Guys Facebook is no Microsoft or Google who only buy to soft kill the competitor.<p>FB is different just look at their past acquisitions like Instagram and others, they all survived and are still in active development and rolling out new features.<p>If it were MS/Google acquiring Oculus, negative reactions would have been justified.