Facebook's acquisition of Oculus Rift was not met with universal acclaim. You may recall, for instance, that Markus "Notch" Persson canceled a planned Oculus version of Minecraft, saying the Facebook deal "creeps me out". (He later relented.) But Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe says the company opted to join with Facebook, instead of Microsoft or Sony, specifically to avoid the limitations of an existing platform.
"If we were going to partner with somebody, because this is a long road ahead... We were thinking the whole time that we wouldn't partner with Microsoft or Sony," Iribe said during an address at the Business Insider's Ignition conference. Google was out as well, according to the Business Insider report, because of its lack of focus. "We didn't know how much time we'd get from the leadership team," he said.
The social aspects of Facebook, on the other hand, fit well with what Iribe sees as the Oculus Rift's great potential as a social platform. "Your brain just believes you're there," he said. "The next step is to feel like you're there with other people."
Facebook dropped $2 billion (yes, billion) to acquire Oculus VR earlier this year, an especially remarkable amount of money given than Oculus hasn't actually released a product yet. And Notch wasn't the only one who was unhappy about it: Our reactions in the immediate aftermath of the buyout weren't entirely and unrelentingly upbeat either, though we've been consistently impressed by the tech itself. Here are the most recent hands-on, (or, indeed, 'eyes-in'), impressions from our hardware guru Wes.
