Facebook will be a “powerful force” for Oculus Rift, according to Oculus CTO John Carmack.
Carmack has finally spoken out on the recently announced Facebook acquisition of Oculus following a week of silence.
The legendary game developer only joined the Oculus team last August and says he “wasn’t expecting” the Facebook buyout, especially so soon.
“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting Facebook (or this soon),” said Carmack. “I have zero personal background with them, and I could think of other companies that would have more obvious synergies. However, I do have reasons to believe that they get the Big Picture as I see it, and will be a powerful force towards making it happen. You don’t make a commitment like they just did on a whim.”
The revelation came in response to a blog post by musician Peter Berkman, which voiced the opinion many have in that Oculus is abandoning its early backers with the acquisition. This is something that Carmack disagrees with.
“There is a case to be made for being like Valve, and trying to build a new ecosystem like Steam from the ground up. This is probably what most of the passionate fans wanted to see.”
However, the difference is that Valve was the only player in the digital games industry for a number of years, but the virtual industry will evolve very quickly.
Carmack also highlights that VR will be a sphere that the major manufacturers will want to wade in to, like Sony has with the Project Morpheus VR headset.
“VR won’t be like that. The experience is too obviously powerful and it makes converts on contact. The fairly rapid involvements of the Titans [like Sony] is inevitable, and the real questions were how deeply to partner with, and with who.”
Carmack also added that the Facebook acquisition came a little bit out of the blue for him, and no doubt other Oculus team members as well.
“I wasn’t personally involved in any of the negotiations – I spent an afternoon talking technology with Mark Zuckerberg, and the next week I find out that he bought Oculus.”
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