Your online experience is about to get much more realistic and immersive.
Social media giant Facebook, known for connecting people through oh-so-hilarious cat pictures and also as a great way to stalk ex-girlfriends, is getting into the virtual reality business.
A couple weeks ago, Facebook announced it was dropping $2 billion to snap up VR headset company Oculus Rift, sending shockwaves through the Internet and gaming communities. Oculus originally made headlines in 2012 when its online Kickstarter campaign earned a whopping $2.4 million in record time from backers made up of ordinary Joes from around the Internet. The company is developing a virtual reality headset that, even though it looks like you have some weird and unattractive snorkel mask strapped to your face, brings you right inside gaming worlds like never before. Prototypes of the Oculus Rift demoed at recent video game expos had testers standing amazed and slack-jawed as they found themselves sitting in the cockpit of a spaceship and able to turn their heads to look around their environment in fully immersive, 360-degree 3D. Game developers like the folks behind the wildly popular and kid-addicting Minecraft immediately jumped on the Oculus bandwagon and began working on ways to embrace this new tech with the potential to completely change how we play video games in the future. Legendary video game gurus like John Carmack – revered as a developer for trend-setting shooter games like Quake and Doom – had such faith in Oculus Rift’s potential that he left a cushy job to join the fledgling company as chief technical officer.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg also obviously saw the device’s potential, but not just for video games.
“This is just the start. After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences,” he wrote when announcing the $2 billion deal. “Imagine enjoying a courtside seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home.”
But some of the same folks, who were loving and supporting Oculus when they were an indie upstart crowdfunded on Kickstarter, suddenly became furious when Facebook cash bought them out. Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft, who had been talking to Oculus about making a version of his game for the device, immediately pulled out of the deal.
“Facebook is not a company of grassroots tech enthusiasts,” he wrote in a blog post. “Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers and nothing but building user numbers.”
But for Oculus, teaming with Facebook’s hefty bankroll and brand recognition may have been a pretty smart and strategic move, considering Sony unveiled its own VR headset for the Playstation called Project Morpheus just a week earlier.
But in the end, only time will tell if this virtual reality tech will catch on with ordinary folk and if Zuckerberg’s $2 billion gamble will pay off.
“One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people,” he wrote. “Over the next 10 years, virtual reality will become ubiquitous, affordable, and transformative.”
It may also just turn out to be a whole new and creepy way to trade funny cat pictures and stalk ex-girlfriends… but we’ll just have to wait and see.
