Only a week after displaying its newest tech on the GDC expo floor, Oculus VR has reached a “definitive” agreement with Facebook. The social giant will acquire the VR manufacturer for apprximately $2 billion in combined cash and Facebook stocks.
Both Facebook and Oculus VR have commented on the deal, Facebook in their official press release and Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey on Reddit. Luckey was optimistic in his post, reassuring fans:
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!
Facebook isn’t a gaming company, so this acquisition may seem strange at first glance. Of course, Oculus VR’s products have attracted a great deal of attention in the still-largely-unexplored field of VR technology, and Facebook’s press release indicates it wants to leverage Oculus VR’s technology for areas including both gaming and communications as a whole:
Oculus is the leader in immersive virtual reality technology and has already built strong interest among developers, having received more than 75,000 orders for development kits for the company’s virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift. While the applications for virtual reality technology beyond gaming are in their nascent stages, several industries are already experimenting with the technology, and Facebook plans to extend Oculus’ existing advantage in gaming to new verticals, including communications, media and entertainment, education and other areas. Given these broad potential applications, virtual reality technology is a strong candidate to emerge as the next social and communications platform.
“Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,” said Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”
Oculus VR will continue to produce the Oculus Rift platform and retain its Irvine, CA headquarters. The deal is set to close during the second quarter of 2014.
For most information, see the full Facebook press release and Luckey’s Reddit post.