Facebook To Acquire Oculus VR Inc for $2 Billion
by Ian Cutress on March 25, 2014 6:25 PM EST- Posted in
- News
- Oculus Rift
Back in September 2012, a $2.4 million Kickstarter campaign finished to help develop the next wave of immersive gaming in Oculus Rift. The premise behind Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset that puts you deeper into the game than any other headset has ever done before. Since that Kickstarter campaign news about Oculus has penetrated all of technical media in terms of the development, the nature of the device and what sort of games are going to be able to use it. I remember a few images of Brian and Anand trying the Crystal Cove prototype at CES this year.
The news today comes as a shock (to me at least) – Facebook has announced today that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Oculus VR Inc at a $2 billion dollar value. This includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook stock (~$1.6 billion on last 20 day average).
Oculus will keep their headquarters in Irvine, CA and continue development on the Rift. With Facebook moving to the help (it is unclear at this point just how much of a role they will play), the focus may shift towards a more social scenario and future for the device, alongside the anticipated action game genre.
The deal is expected to be completed during Q2, and we are awaiting further information as to the depth of the acquisition and how each firm will operate under the new structure. Facebook should have a lot of money from its IPO in order to help drive Oculus investment, perhaps accelerating the process.
Source: PRNewswire
"We are excited to work with Mark and the Facebook team to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world," said Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR. "We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it's only just the beginning."
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DIYEyal - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link
They are dead to me... I will never buy a product from a company owned by facebook...thebeastie - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
I wonder if Oculus VR were secretly holding out on a final release of their product waiting for a take over.The thing I think about now is the CEO of facebook under pressure from shareholders wanting their share price to go up higher and Zuckerberg thinking "I know!, lets sell each Oculus headset for $1200!" Especially if you pay $2b for the company.
ThomasMHarper - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link
Oculus doesn't have consumer hardware, games, or any users and already Facebook is trying to set up some greedy business model where they will be able to recoup the billions they invested. Why couldn't they make their own platform to compete with Sony's version while letting Oculus be a collaborative community platform? http://num.to/268839892477superkev72 - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link
I wouldn't worry about this too much FB didn't try to control WhatsApp or Instagram at all and they won't try to control Oculus. The details would be in the operating agreement between Oculus and FB but I would guess they are prevented from directly controlling the company and is a common practice in this type of acquisition. It looks like a lot of people really don't understand how these work and think poof it's now FB and nothing could be farther from the truth.nutjob2 - Sunday, March 30, 2014 - link
You live in a fantasy world where you think the owner of a company doesn't control it. I'm not sure what you think an "operating agreement" is but I'm guessing that at any point if the existing staff don't like what FB want to do their choices are (a) leave. Sooner or later FB will get whatever they want out of Oculus, most probably sooner.