EDIT: Oculus NOT to be rebranded, FB rebut.

No seriously...

"Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR has reportedly led to plans for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to be rebranded with a Facebook interface and logo."

Will this be just one iteration i.e. a "Facebook model" or does this signal an eventual overall re-branding?

EDIT: Well that's good news...

Due to this news with Oculus seems like even more devs are jumping to Sony

Facebook is Government owned anyways. So when the Gov see an impressive tech like that, they jump on it with 2 bil. Now VR will make it easier to spy on the world through Facebook

Eh, i'll wait a while before casting distaste on it.

@alcapello said:

People are going to be on Facebook like "no one cared who I was on the interwebs before I put on the Oculus."

People really are jumping out on the project like that? Hey, at least 2 Billion can get you a big house and not worry about anything! At least those developers have earned that money to prove their hard work to make VR at home a reality! I really doubt Facebook buying out Oculus will hurt PC sales.

Dunno how I feel about this. I guess Facebook is on a spending spree I just hope it all pans out into something profitable.

@finalstar2007 said:

Due to this news with Oculus seems like even more devs are jumping to Sony

Ohai from my topic ;) Some people on here don't feel that this is a big deal though, heh.

OT: Lol....so it begins. RIP, OR.

Damn, this Facebook thing is polarizing as hell! Nice to see Morpheus getting some love lol

I hope they enjoy that Facebook money, because they won't be getting mine most likely. I am extremely anti-Facebook... never had an account, and if you have to tie one to this device, then I'm out. Glad to see there are going to be alternatives. Just wish they hadn't sold out.

@finalstar2007 said:

Due to this news with Oculus seems like even more devs are jumping to Sony

Pathetic. They're showing their true colors.

Devs working with Sony's VR kit is a good thing as you know it will be for a BETTER gaming experience.
Glad Developers wont be tagging with Facebook virtual spy cam.

Lol..hoping the superior open solution to fail just because you a console fanboy.

Sony executives must be dancing naked in the rain

And you're better because you something big to fail because one person? You're more pathetic.

Like me on oculus rift.

I hope Facebook doesn't destroy Oculus.

Then again the creator's shouldn't have sold out, however 2 billion is 2 billion.

I would have sold out, too. There was no guarantee of OR being a success, after all.

I think most people knew Facebook wasn't going to keep their hands off OR forever after paying two billion.

*Heil68 Likes*

@hummer700: Came here to say this. Not only is the source terrible, there is no real reason for them to rebrand Oculus into Facebook.

They didn't do that with Instagram or Whatsapp, there is no reason to think they'll do that with Oculus.

This sentence makes no sense. What the hell did you mean?

I didn't proofread. You want something big like VR, Sony's VR, to fail because of a fan. That's pathetic.

My knee-jerk reaction is to get frustrated and sad by all this FB+Oculus news. It's because something so great and promising has suddenly become so ambiguous and questionable with a partnership like the giant that is FB.

We don't know what it really means, and that's genuinely troubling. If it's just a way for Zuck to poke his head into another industry, and it won't change what we've all seen already, I won't be too bothered. I'd be pleased if it meant the cost would go down 50-100USD, too..

And where did you get this idea?

Jesus Christ, the overreactions around this news are hilarious as all ****.

Yep... I just made myself look like an idiot. I thought you were saying that you're hoping it fails, not the guy you were replying to.

@misterpmedia said:

Best one so far, easily.

Hilarity is the viscus grease that oils the SW machine.

Well that, hype and apparently butthurt.

Well Oculus Rift is completely different form Instagram and whatsapp. Its not a phone app for starters. So perhaps that has something to do with it..

FB Oculus Rift will be hardly be aimed for gamers and more for social media use and government use.
Sony VR will be more gaming related. Doesnt take a genius to figure that out.
All the money people put in for the start up for OR and then the team making billions out of it. Sony VR is the next viable option.

You do know there are already games for the OR and games are currently in development for it right? do you have anything to support for this claim? statements from facebook?

At the end of the day I don't really care, but I do hope that the core focus on gaming remains in tact... or possibly done proper at sony and MS (if they make one). I ultimately have zero loyalty to any of these corporations, so I dont care who integrates it into gaming...

I will say this however, if you make something that has potential of affecting a hobby you love in positive ways and someone hands you a check for 2,000,000,000 Dollars (thats NINE zeros if youre counting) and you turn it down... you are a certifiable idiot of epic proportions. Everyone has a price and something tells me the Oculus team didnt spend too much time mulling this over.

@lawlessx: There are support for games in OR and lot of them are in Alpha and beta build. Some have been released.
That was before FB acquired it. Team Fortress 2 for example
But it going mainstream as a gaming peripheral and experience? I only see Sony doing it properly as developers are jumping on Sony VR tech.
Pretty obvious Facebook will use Oculus Rift for Facebook purposes and that comes with the usual protocols and regulations.

Were people expecting an actual rebranding? FB is clearly diversifying their portfolio.

Yeah, I think this is the most overblown development in the electronics industry in quite some time. Never underestimate the internet's ability to make a scene over nothing.

Ermm..nope. Eventually Facebook will want to expand to those markets, but it will be a long time from now. For many years forward Rift will be gaming focused, because high-end PC gamers are the only people who will be able to afford strong enough hardware to use it. Without games VR won't become popular and it would mean FB throwing away the billions they've spend. Facebook have shown they use hands-free aproach for their purchases anyway. No reason to expect Rift will be any different.

Sony VR will be inferior technically even when compared to the second dev-kit and will be plain junk compared to whatever Rift will do in their consumer version. Not to mention Rift will release new versions each year, while Morpheus will be stuck with what was shown during GDC. PS4 doesn't really have proper hardware to truly handle VR. Games will have to be heavily downraged to run on it.

From the standpoint of hardware power, games, dev support and specs Oculous Rift will be superior. The only argument you can make for Morpheus is "I like Sony more than Facebook", which isn't really a logical argument.

Well, so long as you aren't chained to Facebook, I will still think about getting one when they hit mass market. I don't care if they are financed by them, but I'll be damned if I'm going to create an account just to use something I don't intend to use for social reasons. Hell, I can't think of a more ANTI-social device.

In other news, did you know PS3s have Facebook integration?

Doesn't the OR require a pretty powerful PC to run games through it in HD?

I won't surprise if Facebook add eye iris scanner in OR, or spy cam.

@TheEroica: I dunno. There's so much more to it than "we're still doing this for you guys!" ( Almost what palmer has been saying on Reddit). And so much more we don't know.

Think Oculus has made a fantastic deal, way too good to turn down imo. I wonder what FB is thinking though. They can't contribute in terms of hardware and not really that much in terms of software either. I mean they are no experts at 3D rendering. Ofcourse they can implement various social features like virtual chat-rooms or something, but I wonder how much demand there is for something like that compared to a straight up video call. Another problem is that all the other companies (Apple, Microsoft, Sony etc) will be able to copy OR if they wish and they are much better at this typ of tech.

I dunno, I can see why the FB stock dived a bit.