Monday, March 31, 2014

Carmack says Facebook buyout of Oculus VR was natural evolution of the medium

Oculus VR CTO and id Software co-founder says that Facebook sees “the big picture” in VR.


Oculus VR’s CTO John Carmack — the most prolific figure in the company — has come out defending the Facebook buyout of his company.

Responding to a blog post by chiptune musician Peter Berkman, Carmack said he “wasn’t expecting Facebook” to be the one buying out Oculus VR but said it was only natural for Titan-sized technology companies to be moving into VR.

“The fairly rapid involvement of the Titans is inevitable, and the real questions were how deeply to partner, and with who,” Carmack wrote, likely referring to Sony’s recent announcement of its plans to get into the VR space with its own headset.

Carmack said that the deal’s announcement came as a surprise, as the week prior he had been chatting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the topic had not been broached.

Part of the criticism that has arisen from the Facebook deal revolves around the company’s data mining and advertising heavy business model. But this doesn’t concern Carmack, as he says it’s important for companies to pay attention to their customers.

“The idea that companies are supposed to interact with you and not pay attention has never seemed sane to me,” he wrote. “I rather like the recommendations that Amazon gives me on each visit. Educate me. What terrible outcome is expected from this?”

Carmack also addressed the other half of the criticism surrounding the deal, which is that early backers of the project were burned because they received no dividend payout (for more on why an equity-based crowdfunding system is needed read this).

There is a case to be made for being like Valve, and trying to build a new VR ecosystem from the ground up,” he wrote. “This is probably what most of the passionate fans wanted to see. The difference is that, for years, the industry thought Valve was nuts, and they had the field to themselves.”

Facebook has yet to announce plans on what it wants to do with Oculus VR.

Source:*Peter Berkman (blog)



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