Facebook has just announced their unexpected acquisition of Virtual Reality gaming headset creators Oculus VR Inc, who are the creators of the Oculus Rift, for a whopping $2 Billion. In an official statement, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said;
“Oculus’s mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences.
Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won’t be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there’s a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We’re going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.
But this is just the start. After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home. The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together. I can’t wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us.”
This acquisition will be boosting the platform and make it available on a wider spectrum of media and applications which the company wasn’t planned to cater for. The latest Oculus Rift devkit was handed out to developers just last week, and we very recently saw the first trailer for the first virtual reality trailer coming to the platform. Sony have also announces their Virtual Reality gaming headset during this years GDC, bringing back to life a fad which was thought to be a commercial failure back in the 90s.