A screenshot from Oculus’ Kickstarter page detailing their support
Yesterday, Facebook officially bought virtual reality company Oculus at a cost of $2 billion.
Oculus VR, which has been working on virtual reality headset technology for the past two years, sees this merger with the social media giant as a way to bring their product-in-development to a mass audience.
The headset, dubbed The Rift, has been a target of great interest in the gaming and technological communities.
The current prototype comes equipped with two screens inside, one for each eye, and pieces together a picture by cutting it in half so that it is proportionate to what each eye can see. At the same time, the headset stretches the image to take up a user’s entire field of vision, including peripheral. The end result is a 3D image that requires the user to move their eyes in order to see the whole picture, rather than looking at a screen and seeing it all at once.
Oculus hopes to target their product toward consumers in their 20’s and 30’s, which is also the same demographic that Facebook is currently losing.
While this transaction appears to be lucrative for both parties involved, not everybody is pleased with the news.
Since yesterday, many gamers have addressed their concerns all across the internet. Multiple game development studios halted their production for the platform in protest. Perhaps the biggest signature of disapproval came from some of the 9,522 Kickstarter endorsers who supported Oculus when it was a start-up company attempting to crowdfund $250,000 to further their efforts in VR technology.
Today, Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus, attempted to pacify the public in a Reddit discussion.
“I am sorry that you are disappointed,” Luckey stated. “There are a lot of reasons why this is a good thing, many of which are not yet public,” He further elaborated. “I am swamped right now, but I do plan on addressing everyone’s concerns. I think everyone will see why this is so incredible when the big picture is clear.”
