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Comment by Lewisham | Hacker News Reader

The video sets off all sorts of alarm bells. Something about this is very, very wrong. Why would all these game developers agree to be in a video endorsing the product, but not actually front money for it?

iD/Zenimax, Epic and Valve would all see the hoped for $250 000 as chump change for a dev kit. Split between the three and it's essentially nothing. My guess is Microsoft or Sony would love nothing more than to tie up an exclusive peripheral for their next-gen consoles, and buy the company outright (as MS did with Kinect). This would be a true differentiator.

That they're looking to Kickstarter to sell $300 dev kits makes me think something very bad is going unsaid. My wild guess is that they still give people headaches as with previous VR attempts, and no-one is willing to put money in the pot with the expectation that it is unsolvable.

People putting money into this are as crazy as those who put money into the OUYA.

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Wow.

So the guy goes out and gets endorsements, on video, from the biggest names in the field. The absolute biggest. And they are unreservedly enthusiastic.

And to you, that's a negative sign.

Wow.

I'm seriously starting to wonder about the HN culture that produces such conclusions at the top comment.

First of all, how do you know they didn't front money? Answer- you don't know that. It's likely some or all them have done so.

There are very good reasons not to make this a Valve product or an id product or what have you. Can you think of them?

The conclusion that something is wrong here may well be a jump-the-shark moment for HN comments.

If Valve et al have already invested in the project, Kickstarter could be more about marketing than funding.

It is a little strange, but I think it's also a product of how it came to be.

It began as a post on a hobbyist 3d headset forum. The guy piqued the interest of John Carmack, who started developing for and promoting it, in tandem with a re-release of a doom game which worked with its specs. It generated a bunch of buzz, so the initial guy was going to put it on Kickstarter to get better deals on some of the components.

Regarding the Kickstarter cut, there was a forum-only Paypal 'gift' donation a couple weeks ago to avoid that, but it wouldn't have been enough. Plus, the rift developer wanted to launch on Kickstarter ahead of Quakecon for the publicity of it all.

This was scheduled to be a couple weeks ago, but then in a flurry, Palmer, the developer of the rift, got a bunch of meetings with some game companies and it's been kind of madness since.

Looking back, it may have been better to work with those companies first, but before he could even get in touch, he drummed up all this interest, and now we've all been waiting on the Kickstarter, I think he feels compelled to launch the Kickstarter anyway, since that was the original plan.

As for headaches: John Carmack demonstrated the rift at this year's E3 and the reviews were almost uniformly positive.

edit: I'm not involved, just have been excited about it for a long time and pledged today.

Reposting an insightful dead comment:

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stevejabs 44 minutes ago | link | parent [dead] | on: Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game

Well: A) These are all software companies. The hardware that they would ever make is few and far between.

B) There is no saying that they DON'T already have an investment in this company. Obviously this kid has enough capital to demo at E3, have office space and prototypes already made. At the very least, these companies may have deals made where they won't have to pay exorbitant licensing fees to put their games on this platform.

C) Perhaps this is the ultimate give back to the community from these companies. They all create tools now to extend their games to the next level. Perhaps they want to see how people will use their tools at a hardware level.

D) I feel like a $300 investment here will go a lot longer than OUYA. There is a prototype already built. They aren't trying to sell a end-user, consumer-level product. At the end of the day, you're getting a likely shitty looking developer kit. For $300, they are probably taking a significant loss just on the technology going into the kit.

EDIT: Spelling

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John Carmack runs a startup that builds rockets. So yeah.

Privately and as a hobby. It has nothing to do with his gaming work.

Why would they front the money if they don't have to? Kickstarter is also about gauging interest.

In any case, I trust John Carmack on this one. He's demonstrated tremendous personal integrity again and again.

You don't need to gauge interest if you believe in the product. The story they are selling of a truly immersive environment is something core gamers have been looking for for years, and there is a pretty full graveyard of companies that tried and failed to reach that holy grail.

There is no reason to look to a Kickstarter in order to prove some point that there is consumer demand for it. There absolutely is, and this Kickstarter is pretty much certain to succeed. Which, again, leads me to think that something is going unsaid.

> "...this Kickstarter is pretty much certain to succeed"

They why not do it? Honestly, I cannot understand the viewpoint you seem to hold. This is a massively easy way to get a lot of attention, early money and get developers thinking about what to do.

Do you really believe all those folks in the video would risk their reputations by putting their name to it without believing it? I bet there are ton of folks at Valve right now who've pledged. Are they wrong to do so?

This isn't a kickstarter to fund the development of the finished product, it's a kickstarter to get these kits out into the hands of as many developers as are interested.

Then it doesn't need a Kickstarter, does it? They don't need Kickstarter taking their cut. They need a web site and an actual company presence, no?

Doing a kickstarter is part of marketing campaigns these days. It gets you crazy exposure (think of the news stories) and engagement (people are unlikely to dismiss something they donated 2 USD to), and is paid for by the customers (in terms of the cut that kickstarter makes).

There are several reasons to do a kick-starter rather than going with one of these partnerships: 1) Funding is non-dilutive 2) You build a loyal developer base earlier, someone who has paid for early access to the product is much more likely to develop on it and give you valuable feedback 3) Start to build your brand 4) Test marketing strategies and pitches

First, as others have mentioned, this guy has already rejected buyout offers. Secondly, these are game developers, not gaming system builders. These guys want this headsets in every house, but don't want to sell them. They want to build the games that everyone plays in these things.

Alternative viewpoint: The team might like to stay free from possible 'corporate influence'. Also, consider the publicity and marketing they're getting for free via this kickstarter.

Palmer Luckey has stated that he has declined at least one buy out offer from a large company.

It would not be a smart move for any major game developer to front a significant amount (i.e. $100k+) money for a project like this. For a good reason, most game developers are not in the business of hardware (even Valve has stated it would rather other people produce the hardware, but will make its own as a last resort).

Plus, even if it were funded, it would be foolish not to put a product like this on Kickstarter and raise whatever additional money you could. This might also give one an idea of how much traction the product would get. I'm a bit skeptical of OUYA, given its not much more than a glorified Android device, but this product looks a bit more promising because (if the reviews are any indication) it really is a leap forward in VR tech.

Sure, Valve or similar could just give them all the money (and maybe they are giving a significant portion), but that wouldn't involve the community- pulling in indie gamers and fans alike. Just like relationships with (good) investors- the money isn't the only asset.

Will this be perfect? I highly doubt it, but its an incremental step in moving us forward in a field that's remained stagnant on the consumer front for nearly 20 years. We need lots of beautiful failures to get to perfection.

"Involve the community" is a vacuous statement. It doesn't mean anything. What involves a developer community is company support, some indication that the work they do will exist and be profitable. If Gabe Newell really liked it, they'd all be wheeling around desks at Valve by now, and Source engine games would all support this in a couple of months. And then you would see other developers eat this up.

You don't need to "involve the community". You need to show them a reality.

Note however that there's nothing to indicate this isn't happening in parallel. Valve may have a good sized team working on making the Source engine work very well with this now, and for all we know contributed $250K that's not included in the Kickstarter.

They are showing a reality. It just happens to be virtual.

Carmack showed that prototype to anyone who would wear it and from the two reviews I've read, everyone is blown away.

I'm assuming software companies don't want to get in the hardware game, but form what I've read, including the Oculus message boards a couple months ago, Carmack is very active in this and might be the mastermind behind everything Palmer is doing. He may not want all the headaches of hardware especially considering he's busy with iD and his space company.

I think another possibility is that he is not turning to kickstarter because he cannot raise money otherwise, but instead because he realizes that it is an incredible marketing tool. Case and point, we're all discussing the device right now, and I'm sure the majority of us heard about it through this post.

One might argue they didn't invest -- or the company said no! -- for the same reason corporate VC is sometimes frowned upon. Taking capital from corporations with related products can scare future partners or customers. Moreover, why sell equity if you can simply sell pre-orders?

Dev kits usually cost money - even from established players. They're not selling dev kits in the sense that they're getting a profit from the sale. I bet the dev kits cost $300 to make, so they're charging $300 for them. The Kickstarter is a fast way to make that happen.

And if a large corporation invested in it, their fiduciary duty to shareholders would likely require them to make it exclusive or charge fat licensing fees. The product launch costs would be many many times more than the dev kit production, and the reputational costs might not be justifiable. Cheering it from the sidelines makes sense; even if it's flawed, $300 is not a big loss for any one developer and puts more hands on the problem.

It's validating a niche market to jumpstart the investment from a bigger corp.

Very glad I saw this comment! I was going to donate but you're right. 250k is a drop in the bucket for these big players and if the tech was that good, one of them would have just swooped it up. On the other hand, they could be sitting tight to see what the finished product looks like before making any offers.

So why does OUYA keep getting on the front page of HN day after day? If its likelihood of success is so low, why do we keep talking about it? And might the fact that we keep talking about it indicate that maybe those people who put money into it aren't so crazy after all?

I don't have an opinion either way.

The OUYA is a self-perpetuating media machine that is built on a very shaky foundation in reality. It's driven on the dreams of those who would love, in essence, the Steam Box: a console that is not controlled in the same way Microsoft and Sony do.

The problem is the reality of that dream is already here, and it's not working. Steam doesn't exist on Linux (yet). The Xbox Live Arcade Indie Games store is a cesspool. Android games, by and large, are not near parity with iOS games. There's a very real threat of piracy on an openly hackable device that will scare away anyone who actually needs to make money to live.

The dream of indie is, right now, tied to Steam and the PC platform. It's the only place it has worked. There is no reason to believe that the OUYA, which does not exist, is in any place to change that.

For more, check out Kuchera's article on it, which I agree with wholeheartedly: http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/the-reality...

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