Just a month back, we reported about the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook for the staggering price tag of $19 billion. The dust has hardly settled, but it has emerged that the social network giant this week has acquired a company called Oculus VR for $2 billion.
As expected, the deal has been met with a wave of incredulity that Mark Zuckerberg would sign off on it. After all, Oculus is a two year old company that has no revenue and no product yet in the market. So what did Facebook see in it? On its part, WhatsApp has real users and market share, while all Oculus has to show for at the moment is a prototype virtual-reality headset that is still far from shipping.
In a post on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg mentioned that he saw the future when trying on the headset and decided to invest on it. Oculus has big plans in immersive gaming industry and Facebook is hoping to accelerate the growth, he wrote, with plans to grow further into many other experiences in digital life.
According to Zuckerberg, uses include “enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.”
Not everyone is impressed by the acquisition though. Indeed, many gamers and developers have expressed their concern that Oculus under Facebook will no longer be able to realize the gaming possibilities that were promised, reported the Washington Post. Developers were also quoted as saying that forcibly linking the Oculus Rift VR headset back to Facebook would eventually cause great games to be stuck in an untenable position.
1 comment:
spelling mistake in the last line. :)
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