Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe Steps Down

The whole DRM move for their headsets brought Oculus a bad reputation among many VR enthusiasts:<p>&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockpapershotgun.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;23&#x2F;oculus-rift-update-blocks-htc-vive-revive&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockpapershotgun.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;23&#x2F;oculus-rift-upda...</a><p>&gt; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gaming&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;oculus-workaround-to-play-on-htc-vive-rendered-inoperable-by-app-update&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gaming&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;oculus-workaround-to-p...</a><p>Though they removed it after lots of users protested:<p>&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockpapershotgun.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;24&#x2F;oculus-rift-vive-no-headset-check&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockpapershotgun.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;24&#x2F;oculus-rift-vive...</a><p>&gt; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gaming&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;oculus-reverses-course-dumps-its-vr-headset-checking-drm&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gaming&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;oculus-reverses-course...</a><p>But the bad image that they got for this still persists among many.<p>---<p>Another thing that Oculus did (probably because of pressure from Facebook, their parent company) is inserting dubious terms into their Terms of Service:<p>&gt; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;there-are-some-super-shady-things-in-oculus-rifts-terms-1768678169" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;there-are-some-super-shady-things-in-ocul...</a>

I&#x27;m rather surprised that amongst the speculation in the comments, no one is really considering that maybe Iribe&#x27;s comments are true. Maybe he really did miss being more involved in the product and engineering part of the job.<p>The company has grown up very quickly, and I have to imagine at this point as CEO, he was spending most of his time in high level business talks and not doing what he loves and what he&#x27;s best at.

They&#x27;re probably sitting on this until touch successfully shipped. This typically happens when something goes wrong though and so far Oculus seems to have sold pretty well from what we can glean. No one expected it to sell millions of units, yet. Perhaps there is a daily usage rate of devices they find troubling.<p>Then again, it could just be Facebook taking more control. Iribe is staying at the company and from the article,<p>&gt; he&#x27;s vacating the CEO seat and moving within the company to lead its PC VR group<p>So perhaps the statements are sincere and he&#x27;s just staying focused on the PC division, which is all Oculus was initially.

I wanted to like VR. I made a few apps, shipped a game, tried the Rift, Vive, and PSVR. My initial enthusiasm spread to friends and family. Peers purchased GearVRs and ordered cardboard. Fast forward a few years and every single one of those headsets is gathering dust. Once enthusiastic friends won&#x27;t take my VR hardware for free.<p>I guess my primary gripe is that it&#x27;s just not comfortable relative to any other form of entertainment. It&#x27;s worse than reading on a phone or tablet. It&#x27;s worse than playing games on a phone, console, or PC. It&#x27;s worse than watching movies in the theatre. Sure, those are high bars and VR is still kinda young. But all the hype is quickly being exposed as bullshit. VR isn&#x27;t catching on. Catching on looks like the iPhone in 2008-2009 or the web in the late nineties.

Just a wild guess, but it&#x27;s possible that since Zuckerberg has a keen interest in VR that he&#x27;s basically taking all of the fun vision &#x2F; strategy parts of being the Oculus CEO and leaving Iribe with the slog.

Random brain dump of questions since I haven&#x27;t had a chance to actually try a VR headset yet:<p>- Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well?<p>- Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment?<p>-Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How&#x27;d that go?<p>- Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination.

Just from an outsider&#x27;s perspective: The entire Oculus acquisition has been one fumble after another, I dare call it a debacle. They traded their community trust online to participate and get the resources of a bigger company (probably due to competitive pressure). The bigger company was facebook, which doesn&#x27;t evoke a large amount of community trust, so there was considerable splintering in the community rallying behind what was seen as the future champ of VR.<p>This was the same early adopter community that wanted to spend the money, buy the rigs, develop for the platform, and further VR in general.<p>Now when I see old school innovators join up, it just feels like they&#x27;ve sold out by association.<p>I don&#x27;t know what&#x27;s going to save its image? Maybe a killer app?

VR is a bubble. It is a gimmick and will never be popular and profitable (in the video game industry, there are other applications where VR is useful, like surgery,architecture...) . I&#x27;m never sick in cars, yet VR makes me sick, it gives me headache and makes me want to puke. If it does that to me, I can&#x27;t imagine how painful VR is for others.

Distancing yourself from Palmer Luckey is probably a good move. Distancing yourself from Oculus is probably a good move too.

Yup oculus is a failure. Smart man not to have his name tainted by a soon to implode venture; good move Iribe.

Now is the best time to leave VR, before the entire fleet sinks.

It looks like they (Zuckerberg?) realized that high end device model by Oculus is not competitive compared with the mobile VR solutions like Daydream.