No Notch niche: Minecraft man in rift with Oculus after Facebook gobble Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson has used the occasion of Mark Zuckerberg's acquisition of Oculus VR to unload on the boy wonder's Facebook – and bid farewell to the Rift virtual-reality headset team. Perhaps at least a little miffed that Zuck's personal shoppers arrived a few weeks into an investigation about whether …
Interesting way to boost your business.
Buy an exciting new* technology that a lot of gamers and gaming companies are really interested in.
Because of who you are alienate the whole of the same gamer client base.
Because of how you do business alienate all the gaming studios.
Build a new client base from people who don't even know what the product is or what it does.
Result - VR Candy Crush
*I know it's not at all new or original but you know what I mean
Is Valve (Steam) still working on something? I thought they fired that whole department (that's where the Jerri Ellisworth and Rick Johnson who started CastAR came from). CastAR does have a VR option, but I'm not sure how it's going to compare to a dedicated device.
Frankly, I'm kinda in shock still about this. I can kinda see it from the Occulus perspective, and it alleves my fears they will never produce a consumer product a little, but I can not see it at all from the Facebook perspective. I don't think full VR really works for Facebook, AR maybe, but not really VR.
I would have loved minecraft for the rift, but not at the expense of having to join the facebook hegemony.
Games are one of those tech enabling areas (like porn) where the participants are prepared to pay for new technology. Gamers will spend money on one, my missus won't just to play candy crush or farmville 3d.
I've been watching the VR revolution that never occurred from the '80s onwards. I remember playing this VR tank battle game on a VR stand at the Trocadero in Leicester square. You needed the neck muscles of David Coulthard to wear the headset which contained a pair of exceedingly low res screens seemingly driven by valves and internal combustion engines.
I can wait a bit longer for one that doesn't require me to sell my soul to facefeck.
oh also, where's my flying car? :(
Wow. Its nice to see these bastards get called out for once! ..........."People have made games for Facebook....stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build"---- You nailed it!!!
Don't forget to buy some virtual slug pellets to deal with the razor-toothed slugs or a virtual shotgun for the flocks of pesky birds, or a virtual assault rifle to take care of the ravaging zombie hordes that will stumble towards you muttering, "Straaaaawberries".
He could no doubt still have made a bundle of cash shipping Minecraft for Facebook® VR™, but he cares more about sticking to reasonable principles other than just making some more money, especially if it means more money for Facebook.
I was, like everyone else, looking at Oculus Rift, but now, of course, like many others, I won't be. John Carmack, I hear there's a good job for you over at Valve developing their VR.
I guess it all goes back to that meme: in Gabe Newell we trust.
I think it's time for celebration over at Valve - there were a lot of developers expressing their disdain for the Facebook deal, and would no longer develop for Oculus Rift, and Valve is the clear alternative. To Valve: get a dev kit out soon!
Will they give their users the opportunity to sit in a virtual pub, with their hundreds of virtual buddies ("friends" pfff), using augmented reality? No thanks.
While I see plenty of use cases in simulation environments, I just can't see any social aspect to VR - quite the opposite actually, because the moment you have that thing on your head, you are unavailable for any other interaction with anyone around you until you take it off again.
Anyway, with Facebook buying Oculus, VR has made a step backwards. Competitors unite!
The guys from Oculus have already stated there will be no requirement for an FB account to be able to use the headsets, and no adds provided via the Rift software itself. Although they also stated they have no control over what the apps that use the Rift will do, so they could still do ads, jusrt like some games do now.
But who's to say what things will be like in a years time!
The guys from Foculous have no more credibility than a banker now, although they are considerably richer than before.
The Kickstarter community that backed them must be positively incensed. I know I would be if had given money to help bring a promising product to the world (and promising it was with Carmack on board) only to have it Zuckified before it became anything.
If I were one of the Kickstarters I would be seriously thinking of suing right now.
I think for some of us , the prospect that it will cease to be an open platform is extremely disappointing.
If their PR folks could address this, perhaps there would be less bile....?
The trajectory for gaming that OR was developing had all the tools to help in other research areas, such as for low vision patrons. There are a great many people in this world who have disabilities that could be helped by dual use tech such aas this, but corporations do not typically see this as a "core value".
I'm willing to see how it evolves before passing judgment, but as someone mentioned before "hairs at the back of my neck...."
P.
Good.
Maybe this will cause people to STFU about OR for a bit.
I fail to see what new IP they are bringing to the table, and they are taking away spotlight from already available solutions that IMHO fill the gap better (ie Head tracking).
Too many games promised support for TIR5 / Freetrack, then as soon as OR comes along they forget all about it - totally missing the point that existing head trackers provide superior motion tracking (OR is accelerometer based tracking - ie relative, not absolute) for a fraction of the cost, and still work with your big-screen TV, plus allow you to see the controls.
If the display is 3D, then it does. In fact, that is the whole point - What happens to your OR when you get a brand new mega-sized TV with 3D, a curved screen, 4K resolution and all the latest bells and whistles?
If you have a head tracker, it will enhance your experience.
If you have an OR, it will mean nothing but sitting in front of your new monster TV (which you cannot see), trying in vain to find the bowl of peanuts on the coffee table whilst all your mates laugh at the idiot with the headgear on.
Why all the hate? I'm not gonna jump to Zucks defense here but, unlike you (or your "ideas" of who could do VR one better.), Zuckerberg bought it for 2bn US Dollars and you didn't. The question is what does he plan on doing with it? I'm not a stakeholder in Facebook, but if I were THIS would be the Question of the Day. Perhaps he see this as a side opportunity outside of Facebook. I get the feeling that if I were as talented, and as rich as 'ol Zuck. I'd probably tire of that One Trick Pony too...
So lets reserve our hate for now and see how this turns out first. If anything I see this as a good thing for the Oculus Rift. In as far as Zuckerberg has perhaps more motivation to get this junk out the Door ASAP....
Not the feeling I ever had with the People who were in charge of it before? I mean how long has the OR been in the pipeline for now?
"Zuckerberg bought it for 2bn US Dollars and you didn't. The question is what does he plan on doing with it?"
On the odds alone the kind of person who would buy it for 2bn is not going to be the kind of person who is going to be good at directing it. Then there's...WTF does Zuckerberg know about VR?
The kind of people who *would* be good running it were precisely the kind of people who owned it before, you know the ones who made VR their living and understood it inside out. Rather than someone who has none of that but has a special interest in an unrelated area (facebook).
"I get the feeling that if I were as talented, and as rich as 'ol Zuck. I'd probably tire of that One Trick Pony too..."
Sure but the immaturity of buying Oculus for $2bn...For $2bn he could have developed his own VR product more closely aligned to Facebook.
"So lets reserve our hate for now and see how this turns out first. If anything I see this as a good thing for the Oculus Rift."
I disagree, there are so many bad potentials that come of this that weren't open before. The chance of this being a good thing for OR is low. Chances are OR is about to veer in a direction that is nothing like where it was heading before.
Look at Notch fleeing Oculus as the tip of a very big iceberg being pushed out the way.
"In as far as Zuckerberg has perhaps more motivation to get this junk out the Door ASAP....
Not the feeling I ever had with the People who were in charge of it before? I mean how long has the OR been in the pipeline for now?"
I don't see why there would be motivation to get it out the door. If anything the huge $2 billion tag attached implies there's even more time=money so no rush to get it out. Also there's all that facebook integration to do...
"Why all the hate? I'm not gonna jump to Zucks defense here but, unlike you (or your "ideas" of who could do VR one better.), Zuckerberg bought it for 2bn US Dollars and you didn't. "
Of course - except WE (=not me but all the people who did chip in) financed the takeoff for this supposedly "independent" company. Sugarhill came in with his cigar in his mouth, pulled out his checkbook, wrote a check and told all of us "thank you for making it happen - now get the fuck out of here."
I was going to get a development headset and get into it, but not now. I am not even going to buy it retail to play games now.
God I can't think of a better way to completely sink OR than have Facebook buy it. I bet many PC gamers hate facebook even more than me.
zuckerberg seems to be just buying up toys childishly. drones? vr headsets? wtf does any of it have to do with facebooks business model? it's an attempt to emulate google IMO, and a bid to make facebook more interesting than the boring account/messaging site that it is.
I want to get into "drones" and "virtual reality" and ....$2 billion is money down the pan. Facebook will never make that back from this investment. Where the F are they getting this money? when is this bubble going to finally burst.
I've re-read several times what people have quoted and what he's said. It's all warm, squishy, give-me-hug-give-you-a-hug buzzwords. If he offers to buy a company, it's sold to him not for expertise nor for giving the company a future. It's sold for the large dollars he's offered.
Just go back and re-read the Zuckisms in this article and then ask yourself: "If I owned a company that produced a product I really really cared about, would I sell it to him?". If your motive is take the money and watch things go to hell from a safe distance, you'd take the deal. I find Zuck even scarier than Google or the NSA at this point.
...which Notch put the following way:
"And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition."
EXACTLY - what a disgusting, cynical scumbags make up Oculus (+Sugarhill himself, of course)!
They ran a Kickstarter campaign, only to FOUND AN OPERATION THEY IN TURN SELL FOR $2B and they are thank you for your support?
Disgusting scumbags.
"They ran a Kickstarter campaign, only to FOUND AN OPERATION THEY IN TURN SELL FOR $2B and they are thank you for your support?
Disgusting scumbags."
Let's hope someone has the heart/conscience/common decency/common sense to refund the people's $.
Would be a nice gesture and all.
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