Occulus VR acquisition....

[Turbanator]

http://kotaku.com/valves-top-vr-expert- ... 788613/all

[losCHUNK]

Here's the thing, they no longer have a choice. If FB wanted to lock it down they can and when considering what their business practices involve you can understand the level of mistrust, they have a track record for making money, usually via advertisement and being on the stock market all their investors care about is the bottom line. They're gonna want their 2 billion back at some point and find a way to eek every last penny out of it, wether it's cost to the developer or the consumer.

Every business investor will throw money at a company whilst promising the world to maintain stability, after time people tend to get laid off for not matching their vision of progress. This is an acquisition, people are showing mistrust now and with good reason imo. As a kickstarter campaign this was meant to be for the community and not FBs new toy, any sign of loyalty has been completely tossed out the window

The original marketing ploy for the kickstarter campaign (cos that's all it is now - marketing) was 'by gamers, for gamers'. Now they're already coming out with 'social experiences will influence how VR is implemented' in a maze of PR bullshit.

[losCHUNK]

I forgot to mention n all, Carmack won't be giving a keynote at Quakecon this year if he ain't invited

also this -

“I would have been content probably staying there working with the people and technology that I know and the work we were doing. But they couldn’t come together on that which made me really sad. It was just unfortunate. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to do any work on VR while at id software, I decided to not renew my contract.”

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/john-carm ... e-decided/

THEN WHY SELL TO FB !?

fuck this shit...

[losCHUNK]

He used to be my hero dammit

[scared?]

He used to be my hero dammit

Moron...

[obsidian]

Carmack is not the CEO of Oculus, he's just a high ranking employee. He doesn't get to decide who to sell the company to. It's like you asking the pimpled part-time sales guy at the Microsoft store why the fuck they made two wholly different control panels in Windows 8.

[obsidian]

I can understand why Oculus Rift would sell to Facebook, they need the investment capital... money is important for developing expensive hardware technologies and they're probably having to burn through a lot of it rather fast, it's just the nature of the job. So if Facebook has lots of money to burn, it could benefit OR.

What I don't understand is what Facebook thinks they can benefit from the acquisition. VR Facebook games? VR video calls? Sure that might be kind of cool, but how would Facebook profit from that? Facebook hasn't been known to make a lot of business sense, their IPO launch was pretty abysmal. It seems like a lot of money to dump into something that doesn't seem to have anything that benefits their brand.

[Tsakali]

could simply be removal of a single egg from the basket.

[Transient]

What I don't understand is what Facebook thinks they can benefit from the acquisition. VR Facebook games? VR video calls? Sure that might be kind of cool, but how would Facebook profit from that? Facebook hasn't been known to make a lot of business sense, their IPO launch was pretty abysmal. It seems like a lot of money to dump into something that doesn't seem to have anything that benefits their brand.

Outside of the gaming scene, I think there are plenty of social aspects to VR that can be tapped. VR holidays with family members that live far apart, for instance. Imagine taking an on-rails tour of Carlsbad Caverns National Park with Aunt Ruth or the in-laws without leaving your couch. Take care of obligatory get-togethers with relatives you don't really want to hang out with, but without the hassle of actually going on hated road trips to visit them.

There's money in virtual tours, mark my words...

[Mat Linnett]

I think trying to imagine uses for Oculus with Facebook as the social networking tool it currently is may be misguided.
What I think has happened here is that Zuckerberg has felt the change in the wind amongst younger internet users who actively avoid Facebook.
I think this may simply be a case of safeguarding the future of the company by diversifying interests.

[Eraser]

Carmack said on his Twitter feed that he had nothing to do with the acquisition. One day he just heard they were bought.

As for Facebook's benefit, on more than one occasion I saw people mention Zuckerberg having a personal fascination with VR. It probably is naive to think that is the only motivator, but it wouldn't be the first time a large corporation buys a smaller company doing something extreme just for kicks (like VW's acquisition of Bugatti).

[losCHUNK]

Carmack is not the CEO of Oculus, he's just a high ranking employee. He doesn't get to decide who to sell the company to. It's like you asking the pimpled part-time sales guy at the Microsoft store why the fuck they made two wholly different control panels in Windows 8.

I thought he was a board member with a vote

Still no keynote tho ?, and sucks id didn't acquire oculus instead, or atleast supported it

Zuckerbergs still a cunt n all

[Eraser]

id Software doesn't have the monetary assets to buy Oculus. Also, they're in no position to do that considering them being owned by Zenimax.

[losCHUNK]

That's what I was saying, well, carmack and why he left

[obsidian]

I copied these verbatim from a discussion John Carmack was having with some people on a blog...

I did skip the data mining issue, mostly because I just can't get very worked up about it.

I'm not a "privacy is gone, get over it" sort of person, and I fully support people that want remain unobserved, but that means disengaging from many opportunities. The idea that companies are supposed to interact with you and not pay attention has never seemed sane to me.

Being data driven is a GOOD thing for most companies to be. Everyone cheers the novel creative insight and bold leadership that leads to some successes, and tut tuts about companies ending up poorly by blindly following data, but cold analysis of the data is incredibly important, and I tend to think the world will be improved with more and better data analysis.

I have never felt harmed by data mining, and I rather like the recommendations that Amazon gives me on each visit. Educate me. What terrible outcome is expected from this? Be specific.

I share some of your misgivings about companies "existing and operating only to be acquired". I am a true believer in market economies, and the magic of trade being a positive sum game is most obvious with repeated transactions at a consumer level. Company acquisitions, while still (usually) being a trade between willing parties that in theory leaves both better off, have much more of an element of speculation rather than objective assessment of value, and it definitely feels different.

There is a case to be made for being like Valve, and trying to build a new VR ecosystem like Steam from the ground up. This is probably what most of the passionate fans wanted to see. The difference is that, for years, the industry thought Valve was nuts, and they had the field to themselves. Valve deserves all their success for having the vision and perseverance to see it through to the current state.

VR won't be like that. The experience is too obviously powerful, and it makes converts on contact. The fairly rapid involvement of the Titans is inevitable, and the real questions were how deeply to partner, and with who.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting Facebook (or this soon). I have zero personal background with them, and I could think of other companies that would have more obvious synergies. However, I do have reasons to believe that they get the Big Picture as I see it, and will be a powerful force towards making it happen. You don't make a commitment like they just did on a whim.

I wasn't personally involved in any of the negotiations -- I spent an afternoon talking technology with Mark Zuckerberg, and the next week I find out that he bought Oculus.

[Eraser]

And now Zenimax wants a piece of the pie:
http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/01/zeni ... lus-stole/

[obsidian]

Oculus uses zero lines of code that I wrote while under contract to Zenimax.

[scared?]

Obviously carmack was a pussy to sell to them...moron...

[Mat Linnett]

The guy who runs Zenimax is a lawyer and is always trying shit like this. He's also got some shadiness in his background. Guy's a scumbag.
Robert Altman's the guy. No, not that Robert Altman.
This one.

[Eraser]

Family?