At the end of the day this isn't good or bad. It is really more about long term disruptive technology and its viability outside giant dens like Facebook and Google. Looking around I don't see an ecosystem that can support such things without giant corporate backers and that is definitely not a good thing because at the end of the day the values of our corporate overlords tend to be slightly misaligned with that of the individual.
Does Facebook have a history of doing this? Instagram is still completely seperated (there's fb integration but twitter is the one that broke instagram integration, not the other way around).
Not even mentioning the fact that the Oculus is not a SaaS, it's a screen. How is Facebook going to "shut down" calls to a device driver (if it's even that)? Why would they do that?
People here seem to think that Facebook the company can only consist in Facebook the website, but they have a lot of money to invest in other things.
Like I said in my original comment. I don't think this is a good or bad thing. My philosophical stance on technology is different and I'd much rather see a sustainable ecosystem of technologists that are not always driven by profits and quick payoffs from acquisitions.
But Facebook doesn't and won't have a device in my life, and I refuse to buy an Occulus product because I don't believe that Facebook won't get access to usage data (or be involved as a platform middleman).
That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Lots of hip tech companies open source a lot of things, that doesn't make their rent-seeking, dark-patterned, scammy operations any better for the end consumer.
Facebook is one of those companies who's done so much public bad that I personally can never forgive them - it doesn't matter if they open source Oculus code, I just simply will not participate in anything that will make Facebook richer.
It is also telling to me that when they talked about the emotions that you could evoke with VR vs a 2D screen that most of them were negative.
We have a couple of the DK1's and we really had a lot of hope for the tech - but I remain unconvinced that this acquisition will be a good thing in the long run. I also didn't like how he talked about the kickstarter campaign being the first to prove that the crowdfunding model could be used to create a billion dollar company - I believe if you went back and asked most of the initial investors in the kickstarter I don't think that was something they were hoping for.
That said, I got the impression things were going pretty well for Oculus without Facebook's help.
Cisco bought Flip for $590 million in 2009. By 2011 it was toast. While visionary for a moment, it wasn't perceptive enough to the impact of the smartphone.
There is a case to be made that Oculus needs large amounts of capital to procure the manufacture of a huge volumes of headsets. Unless explicit guarantees were part of the sale, Facebook could allocate the capital to something else. They are a public company and the bottom line is their companies performance, not the success or failure of Oculus.
Hmmm... maybe that's why they scurried under the FB rock.
But as a huge Valve fanboy... it sure is fun to imagine.
Now, reporters will look at the comments by FB predisposed people and assume there is now acceptance.
Oh, right, but I'm just a small developer.
Apparently I don't have enough money to pull that off.
That would have made it make more sense at least.