When Facebook announced plans to acquire Oculus VR for $2 billion, some fans of the virtual reality firm accused it of selling out. But CEO Brendan Iribe said today that the move will allow it to expand more rapidly and potentially bring its technology to 1 billion users rather than a few million.
Though the initial focus for the Oculus Rift was gaming, virtual reality in the next decade is "going to be a lot about face-to-face communication," Iribe said during an appearance at TechCrunch Disrupt.
Prior to signing on the dotted line with Facebook, Oculus VR was "very open" with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg about the need to stay independent, Iribe said today. Zuckerberg told the Oculus team that "you can use any part of Facebook or not ... now you just have one of the biggest networks behind you."
Ultimately, with Facebook, Oculus will be able to create the largest Massively multiplayer online game (MMO) ever made, Iribe said. "We want to put a billion people in VR," so why not start with Facebook and its infrastructure?
When questioned about his commitment to gaming, Iribe pointed out that the Oculus team is still largely game developers, including CTO John Carmack. But the question is, "do we want to be Game Boy or do we want to be iPhone or Android," Iribe said. Do you want to build a platform that reaches 1 billion or 20-50 million?
Developers are going to have a lot more success shipping their content on a platform with 1 billion users, Iribe said.
When asked about Google Glass, Iribe quipped that they were not exactly the most fashionable headgear and likened it to people riding around on Segways when those devices first emerged. That might seem a little ironic given the bulky nature of his company's own headgear, but when pressed, Iribe said that Oculus VR has a "different set of challenges" than Google Glass.
Problems like motion sickness and a headset that heats up after too much use are easier to fix than some of the issues with the augmented reality on Glass. He pointed to "far-fetched marketing videos" that made the experience on Google Glass look much better than it actually is. "I think you have to be very careful with that," according to Iribe, who said that Oculus has been careful not to mislead users about what the Oculus Rift experience provides.
In the wake of the Facebook purchase, meanwhile, there was a lot of talk about whether Oculus's Kickstarter backers, which contributed $16 million to the VR headset, should get a stake in the company now that it's a billion-dollar firm.
Kickstarter has said that that's not the point of its platform, and the company's CEO, Yancey Strickler, reiterated that during a separate appearance at TechCrunch Disrupt today.
"We're planning on sitting that one out," Strickler said, when asked if Kickstarter would jump into the crowd-funding equity debate.
Kickstarter began in order to fund projects that wouldn't normally attract the sort of VC funding that startups normally covet. "Art works by different rules," Strickler said. Kickstarter likes to see projects get funded because they're cool, not because they will line the pockets of venture capitalists.
When asked about the Oculus backlash, meanwhile, Strickler said it was kind of old-fashioned to think that a firm had "sold out" when selling to a bigger player.
"Even supposedly cool or micro-culture art is now part of the huge marketplace," he said, pointing to Wes Anderson's American Express commercials. "And no one cares anymore."
The Twitter conversation about the Oculus acquisition, therefore, was "fascinating to me," Strickler said.
Check out some of that anger in the slideshow above, and see our Hands On With the Oculus Rift DK2, as well as How the Oculus Rift Brings the Tribeca Film Festival to Life.