This just in; Facebook has bought Oculus Rift.

In a blog post Facebook announced this news just a moment ago.

Quite interesting and surprising news, but extra interesting is that this shows that seeing a huge future for VR is not just something for weird nerdy people like me.

And of course this also means that there will be many new possibilities for the Oculus as this investment will allow them access to a lot of Facebook’s recourses.

Facebook already said that their acquisition will allow them “to accelerate Oculus’ growth in gaming, communications and new social experiences”.

Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said; “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”

Lucky Palmer just replied to this news on his facebook profile.

When Facebook first approached us about partnering, I was skeptical.  As I learned more about the company and its vision and spoke with Mark, the partnership not only made sense, but became the clear and obvious path to delivering virtual reality to everyone.  Facebook was founded with the vision of making the world a more connected place.  Virtual reality is a medium that allows us to share experiences with others in ways that were never before possible.

In the end, I kept coming back to a question we always ask ourselves every day at Oculus: what’s best for the future of virtual reality?  Partnering with Mark and the Facebook team is a unique and powerful opportunity.  The partnership accelerates our vision, allows us to execute on some of our most creative ideas and take risks that were otherwise impossible.  Most importantly, it means a better Oculus Rift with fewer compromises even faster than we anticipated.

 

Very little changes day-to-day at Oculus, although we’ll have substantially more resources to build the right team.  If you want to come work on these hard problems in computer vision, graphics, input, and audio, please apply!

This is a special moment for the gaming industry — Oculus’ somewhat unpredictable future just became crystal clear: virtual reality is coming, and it’s going to change the way we play games forever.

On his own facebook profile Mark Zuckerberg also shared this news;

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.

Please make sure to click the links to read the full announcements.

It seems like Zuckerberg sees the same huge potential for VR that I do.

It seems that Markus Persson, the person behind Minecraft is not happy with this news.
They pulled cancelled a deal with Oculus according to this Twitter post;

Screenshot_98

Now if only someone could convince both Oculus and Facebook that Second Life is the ultimate virtual reality social world…

Personally I think that Facebook is up to something.
First the browser based ‘virtual world’ CloudParty quits after being acquired by Yahoo.
Then Facebook buys Oculus.

I would not be at all surprised if Facebook is working on a huge online (and mobile) virtual world where people have ‘virtual homes’ in stead of pages.
And who knows what else.
If Facebook creates something like this and it has a lot of freedom and works very well with the Oculus, Second Life may have a big problem.