back to article Facebook Oculus VR buyout: IT WANTS your EYEBALLS

Mark Zuckerberg made his boldest and certainly most physical play for eyeballs yet on Tuesday when Facebook announced plans to acquire virtual reality startup Oculus VR - the outfit behind Rift headsets - for $2bn. It's the latest in a series of brash moves from the free content ad network. Oculus VR now joins the ranks of …

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  1. Zog_but_not_the_first
    WTF?

    Hell on Earth

    "Facebook World". Where's the Munch Scream icon when you need it.

    1. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Hell on Earth

      Even Westworld was preferable to this...

  2. weevil

    Oculus gone from gaming to "social" with 1 dreadful purchase. Game devs are already pulling out of it and switching to Sony's offering.

    Oculus have sold their souls to the devils murdering cousin.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Takes some doing to make gamers prefer Sony to anything.

      Gah. I had been looking forward to this stuff too.

      1. Piro Silver badge

        Everyone was, AC

        Everyone was.

    2. Pen-y-gors

      Sold their souls?

      If I had a product that was still in development and Zuck offered me $2 BEEEEELLION for it, I think I might say yes. And if it was Beelzebub offering the dosh I'd settle for $1billion.

      I really can't blame them. This is like winning the lottery twice weekly for the next couple of years!

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: Sold their souls?

        "Thiws is like winning the lottery twice weekly for the next couple of years!"

        Provided they sell their newly acquired Facebook shares before it all goes tits up...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sold their souls?

        You'd been had. It would all be in "shares" that pay out on 20 years time, after the company does a Titanic. Always read the small print on the soul sale documentation...

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sold their souls?

        I'm possible in the minority in this respect, but I'd rather retain control of my business and settle merely to become a multi-millionaire rather than a billionaire. My integrity would be intact, I'd have the respect of the gaming community. As a bonus I'd also have the satisfaction of knowing that my product had changed the world and that I would leave a lasting legacy when I die. And, if my crowdsourced product had gone on to be spectacularly successful, I would have given something back to the spirited donors who gave me a leg up. Maybe I'm just naive, I honestly don't know.

        1. Professor Clifton Shallot

          Re: Sold their souls?

          "I'm possible in the minority in this respect, but I'd rather retain control of my business and settle merely to become a multi-millionaire"

          I am with you there - it wasn't as though they were looking at poverty if they didn't take this offer.

          However they may just not see it as a bad thing - if what they care about is getting the product right then this should give them the stability and security to achieve that.

          Or some such bullshot will be how they justify it.

          1. Eddy Ito

            Re: Sold their souls?

            The founders probably "sold their souls" long ago. Don't forget they previously had two rounds of VC funding after kickstarter; the first for ~$16M and the second for ~$75M. It's likely the founders no longer held a controlling stake in the company and the 8 or so venture firms decided that a 20X return was adequate for them to move on and try their luck at another ground floor investment.

            On the FB side, all I can think is 'what the hell?' Either this is the most brilliant move by Zuck and Co. or the worst attempt at trying to stay relevant in the headlines.

      4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        Re: Sold their souls?

        "If I had a product that was still in development and Zuck offered me $2 BEEEEELLION for it, I think I might say yes. And if it was Beelzebub offering the dosh I'd settle for $1billion."

        Actually I think it's more like $400m in cash and $1600m in Fapbook shares.

        So $400m in the folding stuff is not bad.

        But I wonder is that what the guy who wrote QDOS thought when MS bought it for $50K so they could get MSDos 1.0 out the door?

        He went off for a bit of a holiday. They went off to establish a stranglehold on the PC market.

  3. Crisp

    I was worried that Zuckerberg literally wanted my eyeballs then

    I wouldn't put it past him though. I'm going to start checking app permissions a little bit more carefully now.

  4. Mage Silver badge

    free content ad network.

    You mean "content free ad network"?

    I know an old joke.

  5. DropBear
    Mushroom

    Want any of my data? Want my "eyeballs"? YOU! SHALL! NOT! PASS!

    Bitch.

  6. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Integration

    This commentary complete ignores the idea of integrating Oculus with the rest of the stuff. The other purchases extend Facebook's offering. If I was an investor in Facebook I'd want a more convincing justification for the purchase than that offered so far. The deal might work or it might just be another AQuantive.

    In any case, I wonder when Facebook is going to get around to writing down (let's be charitable) these investments.

    1. NomNomNom

      Re: Integration

      "If I was an investor in Facebook I'd want a more convincing justification for the purchase than that offered so far"

      That's why you aren't an investor in Facebook.

      By the time VR goes mainstream for Doctors surgeries and Tennis Courts, the world will be a different place. Whatever the investment plan Facebook had for VR it probably won't end up making sense. Probably we'll find that Facebook owns one of three major VR headset manufactures in the future. But the popular VR software that runs on those headsets is created by 3rd party software companies. So Facebook doesn't have access to the data.

      Oops. Good luck getting that $2bn back from selling headsets.

  7. Vince Lewis 1

    I've given this some thought.

    Zuck is never going to get his 2billion back via Oculus directly. Its only ever going to be indirect, via services thst use VR, any VR.

    The Rift is hardware, and while posible (but highly unlikely) to have facebook data slurping firmware that data has to be collected via its driver. The will be open source drivers.

    Zuck is not going to be getting much usable data from me playing HL2 with an oculus, or from any of the first or second gen VR software.

    Its the generations after that he's got his eyes on. The software that majority of people might use VR for, virtual shoping, movies and events.

    If you don't want to feed zuck, then don't use those services.

    The money and resources Oculus have just got are good for VR, the unpleasent VR facebook stuff was going to happen anyway. The only real change is the Rift will come sooner and better.

    1. David Webb

      Biggest issue that I can see is that FB wants all your data, ALL of it. They then suggest OR is perfect for talking to your doctor. Would anyone really trust facebook with the data they would get from a private VR chat with the doctor?

      Watching tennis with it, expect adverts to be placed on the screen at set times, which based on your previous chat (not yours obviously) with the doctor will be adverts for Viagra.

      That's before you get down to the fact that OR is very niche and very expensive and requires dedicated support to get it to work properly, so all in all it seems to be a very bad investment which is really going to destroy OR and feed it's rivals, still, it means FB has $2b less in it's pocket so it's not all bad.

      1. Vince Lewis 1

        Agreed, I wouldn't use a Facebook operated service to talk to my doctor.

        But I would use an Oculus Rift, using an independent self-contained service to talk to my doctor.

        Though how my doctor is going to examine my swollen knee via VR I'm not sure.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > The Rift is hardware, and while posible (but highly unlikely) to have facebook data slurping firmware that data has to be collected via its driver. The will be open source drivers

      The dev kit hardware is currently aimed exclusively at PC gamers, which is no good to Zuck. He's going to be pushing for a lightweight Google glass-a-like that connects with people's mobiles.

      There is a good chance that the OR as it stands now will be cancelled in favour of a shit mobile version.

      1. NomNomNom

        I doubt Carmack will stand for that

  8. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Zuckerborg's suggestions

    For possible uses do not make any sense to me, none of them.

    I think the guy is in a panic and is spending the shareholder value at random hoping that something may by chance work out OK.

    But 2bn??? FFS, he could have developed the whole thing from scratch to maturity for less than 10 mio...

    1. NomNomNom

      Re: Zuckerborg's suggestions

      "But 2bn??? FFS, he could have developed the whole thing from scratch to maturity for less than 10 mio"

      Perhaps he realizes how hated facebook is. He could set up a competitor to OR but everyone would choose OR over facebook. So taking out OR makes sense (of course now everyone just doesn't like OR)

      What I want to know is how that negotiation went. Did he just offer $2bn? Or did he have to work up to that? Did the OR people really turn down $1bn?

  9. Danny 5

    wow

    Well, that's certainly a big "fuck you" in the face of all their supporters. Create your gear out of donations, but at the first sight of big money, sell out faster then Dr Dre!

    I was very interested in the development of the oculus rift, but i'm going to completely ignore it from now on.

    I have a facebook account, as i see it as a necessary evil, but i want to stay away from them as much as i can.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Re: wow

      At the very least I think they should now repay the donations.

      1. Brangdon

        Re: wow

        Why repay? The Kickstarter folk were promised an early dev kit, which they were given, and that's the end of their involvement. People confuse funding via Kickstarter with buying shares. Kickstarter is used by companies that want money and don't want to give up their shares or control to get it.

      2. g e

        Re: wow

        Or issue stock commensurate to the scale of contribution.

        Ah. But Zuck wouldn't own it then would he.

        Refund the KS contributors twice.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: wow

          there are plenty of kickstarters that never deliver anything because they run out of money long before they'd ever of produced anything.

          Kickstarter is a place where people get base funding for their project and you hope you get the rewards at the end... in general if the company gets bought up all the better as it increases the chance of whatever it was you backed getting finished.

          That's kickstarter. You're throwing money into a hole in the off chance it will achieve its goals. Occulus did achieve its goal and sent the stuff it was required to. Now it's been bought by an interested party. Nobody that backed it is owed anymore then the things they said they'd give.

          People that back kickstarter have a bizarre sense of entitlement that they don't actually have any rights to based on the way the site works.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: wow

      Welcome to the innate risk in kickstarter.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: wow

        I think KS should change their T&C to impose a condition that if the project owners sell the project before delivering the "prizes" to the contributors, they must repay the contributions with an appropriate mark-up or deduction pro-rata to the profit or loss realised on the sale.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: wow

      Did you "donate" to the project? Did you get the listed reward for being a backer? Yes? Then you you got what you paid for, and you should stop bitching that the product you "kickstarted" is actually successful.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: wow

        "Did you "donate" to the project?"

        Not I, no.

        "Then you you got what you paid for"

        If that is the case then I agree, the contributors should have no grounds to complain. What I meant was that if the project is sold *before* it happens there should be an upside to the contributors.

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: wow

        >Did you get the listed reward for being a backer? Yes? Then you you got what you paid for,

        Or, I paid for a dev kit for a new VR eco-system which I now find is owned by Facebook.

        It's like buying an ARM dev kit, funding the development of ARM, and then being told that all ARM devices were now sold to company X and only company X's software would run on them.

      3. TomChaton
        Stop

        Re: wow

        Unless, of course, you're a developer who subsequently spent months developing for the prototype you were sent, only to find that the whole shebang has been sold to an outfit that has - at the last count - no respect for developers, and little interest in gaming.

        Under these circumstances, I can see why backers are up in arms.

  10. Lionel Baden

    there will be

    The fastest Firmware hacks in history !!!!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Second Life 2.0?

    Is this Faecesbook is aiming for?

  12. ADJB

    Faceholes?

    Am I the only person that sees this as a quick route for facebook to get a product to market which is (roughly) the equivalent of Google Glass?.

    Are we soon to faced with hordes of faceholes?.

  13. cracked
    Meh

    Prisoner Cell Block F

    And, by keeping us locked away in separate rooms, Zuckerberg recognises that he needs tech that will - no matter how convoluted the conceit - make us believe (however fleetingly) that we are sharing our lives together.

    Now I know El Reg hived off all mobile stuff to its own pages. But surely this is as ... loopy ... as Zuck deciding everyone will be sat staring into a pair of monitors for the rest of their lives. He'll be bigging up the Video Conference Tool of the Future, next!

    Who sits locked away anywhere, any more? Most people are out and about with phones and tablets, nattering with "friends", aren't they? Or sitting surfing while ma and pa watch the telly?

    I agree with Vladimir-P, up above, this just looks like chucking some cash at something that's trendy. Keeps the investors believing Facebook will be relevant in the future, I guess.

  14. Felonmarmer

    Secret plan?

    OR dump all the FB shares on the market, in one hit, crashing the FB share price and making Mr Z cry like a little girl as his empire goes down the plughole.

  15. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Well

    we can look forward to a VR future that instead of full on 3D blood and gore combat sims , we'll end up with candy crush 3d complete with ads

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a really repugnant vision of the future. Its like someone just tore up your favourite sci-fi and used it to wipe their arse.

    "...a boot stamping on a human face - forever" given flesh.

  17. Kay Burley ate my hamster

    He bought the wrong one.

    Let FB have the big clunky! I want the Avegant Glyph anyway.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvNmmumFyhU

  18. imanidiot Silver badge

    The point

    Zuckerberg is missing it... If VR is ever to take off I think it would be the gamers who would make it happen. This tech isn't going to appeal to most "non gamers" and casuals unless it's dirt cheap and there is a VERY clear advantage to having it. It's not going to be dirt cheap and there is no clear advantage when this starts outs.

    For this kind of tech you want a target demographic that is active to pick up new tech, use it heavily with ever increasing amounts of creative applications and willing to spend quite a lot of dosh trying out said new tech. IE you want gamers.

    1. PatientOne

      Re: The point

      I think there is a potential market for VR in education that would eclipse gaming.

      Back in 1999 I was looking into this: A Virtual campus for students that can't attend lectures. What was being done then was lectures being filmed and made available online to students. The problem was there was no interaction, and that is a big part of education hence the project. It didn't get far: There wasn't much in the way of funding, but the principle was presented and probably forgotten.

      However, this technology would make it possible to set up a virtual lecture which would open up all sorts of opportunities in education. No need for lecture theatres would mean lectures could be held when it was convenient for the students and lecturer rather than be subjected to schedule hell as they are now, separate rooms could be created for work groups as needed, lectures would become economic for smaller classes and students would not be bound by geographical location (lab work could be a problem at first, but ultimately - make that virtual, too).

      Gaming could quickly become eclipsed by Education for driving further development of this technology. However I'm pretty sure the Adult industry would be in there, too...

      1. NomNomNom

        Re: The point

        There are plenty of potential markets for VR that would eclipse gaming. But imanidiot's valid point is that those markets will be very hard to break into, decades. Gaming can be broken in tomorrow.

  19. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

    Gaming community a niche market?

    a $75 billion niche market.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Gaming community a niche market?

      Gaming is bigger than Hollywood

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Zuck

    Just pi** off and do something useful

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Zuck

      Jump off a bridge?

  21. poopypants

    Zuckerberg is a fool

    The thing that makes VR special is not just the 3D vision, it is the fact that head movement is tracked and reflected in changes to what you see. This can easily be done in games by mapping head movements to the position and orientation of the in-game virtual camera. No such feedback is possible in the real world, thus reducing VR to simple 3D - and we all know how popular that turned out to be.

  22. stu 4

    it aint hardware, its software

    Occulus ain't hardware. not really

    it's just a dumb screen with some optics stuck in front on it. I build one myself 5 years ago for FPV.

    Occulus is software - it's the drivers and the SDK.

    the hardware is pretty much an irrelevance.

    1. Vince Lewis 1

      Re: it aint hardware, its software

      I disagree, there is a lot of hardware. A lot of specialist hardware, it most definitely is not a dumb screen. Yes there is software to make sense of data, but that can be replicated in an open source system.

  23. Haku

    Facebook in 3D?

    I don't even like it in 2D.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Alert

      Re: Facebook in 3D?

      Oh n0es!

      Dey just changed the interface so teh LIEK button is 2 pixels CLOSER to me!?!?

      WTF, FB!?!11?1??1? [Thumbs Down Icon][Thumbs Down Icon][Thumbs Down Icon]

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "and virtual reality might be a good vehicle for that"

    .."especially once it is doused in ad goo." ... He needs tech that will - no matter how convoluted the conceit - make us believe (however fleetingly) that we are sharing our lives together"

    .- Love it!

  25. NomNomNom

    ""After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences," he said. "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.""

    Getting it to work in real-life settings - including getting "doctors" and "tennis courts" to install it and then finding a segment of the public who will accept, pay for it and use it - that is decades off. And that's not simply because of the technology. It's the social inertia.

    The first step is getting it to work with games, hard. With completely virtual worlds that you control, leveraging all those PC gamers out there who are able and willing to shell out on such a step change of kit for gaming.

    If Oculus does not focus primarily on gaming now, but messes about on tennis courts, someone else who does focus solely on games will be the future of VR.

  26. Pat 11

    Oh wow, is VR about to happen again?

    Let's hope it goes better than the previous times it was about to happen.

    Actually, I work with VR a bit, and really, a few minutes at a time is enough. If it was social I can't see it being any more compelling than video telephony. I guess wankers will like it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh wow, is VR about to happen again?

      Higher resolutions and faster refresh is definitely making this generation of VR more plausible, and with the miniaturisation of hardware cheaper to achieve. I'm hopeful - and what have you got against wankers anyway, after gaming they will be the market that brings this to the masses (it's why VHS and DVD's and the internet went mass market, ie porn).

      EDIT: After rereading your post, I guess that's what you meant.

  27. Dom 3

    VR: Real Big, Real Soon Now, since 1989

    Mind you, pads were the other Hot New Thing in 1989, so maybe the time really has come.

  28. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    So facebook and Google vying to see how much data they can slurp from their product

    Welcome to the future.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    not the one

    Fluck sake just stick us in the matrix soup tank and be done with it.

  30. Dick Emery

    Muh data!

    I'd rather trust the NSA with the aquisition.

  31. Adam Foxton

    This isnt that bad

    Facebook.doesnt have the experience to build another Oculus, presumably. Otherwise they would have already. It's a simple enough concept too, split an LCD in two and apply optics.

    The thing is there are 2 generations of dev kits out there now. People have full access to the hardware, and FB wont be changing it too much- that'd be a waste of cash and dev time.

    So when the Facebook-OculusRift (abbreviated to 'Foc-u- lot' just to make a point) is launched, it'll take about 20 minutes before it's cracked and free from all this social crap.

    The thing is, Oculus mods or not, stereoscopic 3D gaming had been about for a decade at least; there used to be a thriving 3D headsets community on the nVidia forums (which spawned MTBS3D) before nVidia properly entered the 3D arena themselves. Things changed then and I dropped out, really need to go back!

    The principle behind those drivers still exists, so once people are hacking code for the Rift it'll be exploited. So you'll be able to play your favourite current and past games in 3D stereoscope with headtracking.

    Someone might even make a fortune selling 'defacebooked' versions of the Rift.

    Tl;dr: Its not all doom and gloom. Facebook wont change the underlying software so theyll be hacked out of it in minutes.

  32. Yugguy

    SCIFI comes true again

    Wow.

    How many scifi stories have been woven around humans becoming immobile objects, only experiencing the world second-hand?

    This sounds like my idea of HELL to be honest.

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