3 Commando Brigade

So Facebook bought Oculus Rift

It was always too good to be true. Hopefully all of the big gaming companies like Valve will drop support now.

Why sell it off anyway, it was obviously the next big thing. Could have made loads. 2 bil though, facebook is just fail.

Google have made some odd acquisitions recently. They bought DeepMind (an artificial intelligence company) for £400 and Boston Dynamics (a robotics company funded by DARPA). Nobody is sure why they are buying these companies or what they are going to do with them.

With Facebook now buying Oculus VR you can't help but think that these corporate giants must have something big in mind, something that isn't necessarily directly related to their current primary market. Whatever Facebook has in mind for Oculus Rift, I'm sure it won't be just a novelty item. Bear in mind this is Facebook's 2nd largest acquisition they have ever made, they must have something big planned (hopefully still aimed at the gaming market).


I won't lie though, I still have some doubt in the back of my mind. If Oculus Rift ends up just being some new way of socialising in a virtual world I think I might just punch Mark Zuckerberg in the face.

It's interesting to compare perceptions of a company against it's financials...

FACEBOOK
Users: 1.2 billion, up 16%
Last QUARTER sales: $2.6 billion, up 63%
Profit: $523 million, up from $64 million
Earnings per share: 31 cents
Cash: $11.5 billion, up from $9.3 billion

So although there may be reasons that we personally don't like Facebook, the numbers say that billions of people use it, that it's revenues and profit are still growing and that it has bucket loads of cash in the bank to spend on development of new products, perhaps such as Oculus.

Exactly, doesn't that make you think? It's the fact that it seems like their could be no possible connection that sparks such curiosity.


Also, VR + p*rn, it's going to happen lol

Facebooks financials are good because they have endless numbers of profitable stupid users who happily let them sell on their data.

That still doesn't explain what they plan to do with the technology from Boston Dynamics (BD's most successfull technologies are PETMAN and Atlas, both walking humanoids). Perhaps they might use some of the technologies for their Google car? We may have some ideas and speculation, but nobody is really certain.

Maybe some answers here:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/17/google-boston-dynamics-robots-atlas-bigdog-cheetah

To quote from that site:


Note "initial plans". It's the later plans (which may be consumer-focused) that are leaving everyone guessing.