If I was a game studio building a VR game with an Oculus kit, I'd be continuing to work on it, but I'd be calling Sony and trying to get in line for a Morpheus.
I'm nervous that in the long run this sets up VR to be a closed platform, but I guess we'll see. Maybe a closed platform is better than no platform at all, which might have been the outcome if someone with deep pockets never bought oculus.
In this case "you" means "video game enthusiasts." Most non-gamers that I know are not even aware of Oculus and they're not even thinking of VR. The gamers were the people behind these projects. The gamers are the ones who don't want to be spied upon in order to be served targeted adds that they don't care to see.
Perhaps, years from now, my wife will be logging onto FB, buying Farmville credits, and shopping for home decor with her Oculus Rift, but that's not what its original supporters envisioned. It's certainly not something that will be mainstream next year.
I don't know, I can't say what FB intends to do with VR, but I can reason that they want to please their shareholders, that they only know one way to make money thus far, and that money is what drives them. That's fine, nothing wrong with it, it's just not (as you say) the outcome we wanted.
>no platform at all, which might have been the outcome if someone with deep pockets never bought oculus
That seems like a leap or, at least, an assertion made in such non-comital terms as to be rendered meaningless. I'm with you on the fear (anticipation) of a closed platform, I just don't buy the addendum. If you couldn't tell, the whole FB acquisition issue is not sitting well with me.
With the announcement of Facebook buying Oculus, I can see the concern. With this announcement though, I would take it to be a great sign that things are better for Oculus.
Sure why not, Carmack has always focused on tech for tech's sake. ID's games are almost always panned for everything but the tech. Abrash is similarly oriented. I have no doubt they will produce great VR hardware and software, but that still leaves FB in charge of the artistic direction. Throw in a couple of patents and it will be 2030 before another company can get really competitive.
I mean, Carmack was rich enough to fund his own space program.
Id (and Carmack) made most of their money from engine licensing. As Abrash mentions in this post, even Valve licensed the Quake engine code -- you can imagine how that must have made them so much more money than the couple hundred thousand copies of Quake 4 sold if they had any decent licensing business model.
A vast majority of capital-class game companies over a decade old that are still alive now, make/made almost all their money from anything but the games they designed/developed -- but instead from engines (Valve, Epic, Crytek, Id), sales platforms (Valve), publishing (EA, Activision), etc. Blizzard is more or less the only exception surviving almost solely on direct revenue from the games they've developed (mostly just WoW, although all their games are very well-loved).
So please don't jump to the conclusion that people like Carmack make the money to launch rockets from selling Doom sequels. The game design industry is not nearly that lucrative, even if the game tech one is moderately so.
How does that work?
You think Facebook spent $2bn to stop Occulus working on VR??
Personally what I want is something that once I buy is completely free from the company that I bought it from. I.e. an open system that I can control. I don't see such a product coming from a company like FB, but I could be wrong.
Can you imagine how much Facebook would like a recording of your facial expressions while you have a private talk with your friends? Or when you look at ads?
The standard things Facebook does with their data.
Not only does the Oculus positional tracking camera not work like that (and can't work like that since you know, you have an Oculus Rift on your face) but no one has managed to give a statement on what they think the value of that data would be.
Both to characterize the feelings associated with relationships (which is data that Facebook would like to know), and sentiment analysis for various adverts or other things.
For example, Facebook could use a virtual room for people looking to interact, and then place ad objects within the room - and rate your responses to them, in order to profile you for advertisers, and figure out what kind of placements generate the least interruption or most positive association.
Further, you're only talking about the current gen Oculus technology, and not anything about what Facebook might (speculatively) deveop going forward.
The obvious path (seeing other virtual worlds) is to generate some method of putting realistic gestures in to the experience, which I highly doubt they'll never attempt to do.
I'm much more okay with a stand-alone thing doing that, than anything tied to Facebook's environment, because I believe Facebook is a fundamentally exploitative company.
Games will still be a hugely important part of VR, just like they're a hugely important part of computing in general, but it isn't a zero-sum game: The application of computers to non-gaming tasks drives improvements that feed back into gaming, and vice versa. Imagine if computers had only ever been used for games, and not for science, business, communication, etc. Do you think you would have anything like the kinds of games we have now? We wouldn't. We probably wouldn't have progressed much past Pong.
Hell, the entire resurgence of interest in VR was only made possible by technology developed for mobile phones, which weren't intended as a gaming platform, and whose "casual" games are generally viewed with disdain by hardcore gamers. Yet without this non-gaming platform, VR would still be in the doldrums.
And if you think Sony are going to forgo an opportunity to make billions in profit from general-purpose VR in order to please "games people", then you're either crazy or extremely susceptible to marketing.
Considering that Oculus VR is hiring industry veterans like Abrash, Carmack, Forsynth, Binstock, et al. I'd expect them to be even more focused. These are all people that have worked on big projects, some of which have failed (Abrash and Forsynth worked on the failed Intel project Larrabee, for example) and some of which have been quite successful (Carmack's tremendous history with graphics engines, the working VR prototype from Valve). They are focused and you can see from this blog post/announcement that they are extremely excited about the project.
Another thing is, Sony's Morpheus, at least right now, will work only on the PS4. The PS4's hardware will be "outdated" by the time the Morpheus is released, if it isn't already. The Rift provides more freedom to the developers from what we've seen, and given the history of the Oculus VR employees, with their openness about their goals and projects, it's going to be more favorable for the developers in the long run than working with Sony's closed system.
[0] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/449598224156745729
If Abrash and Carmack leave, ok, cry us all river. But as of right now this looks like the dream team just got dreamier and just got a mountain of cash and freedom.