Quboid wrote on Mar 27, 2014, 10:05:
GL1zdA wrote on Mar 27, 2014, 07:38:
Cliffy on Oculus Acquisition:
http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/post/80832803371
I know he's not Mr. Popular but I think he's spot on on pretty much every point.
He sounds like he's stuck in 'walled garden' land.
He says :
(A) "IF their system is going to be (hopefully) a dedicated system instead of a (ugh) peripheral they need their version of whatever the app store would be."
(B) "At the end of the day the fact that programming god John Carmack and up and coming tech god Palmer Luckey BOTH think this is a good fit SHOULD TELL YOU SOMETHING."
(C) "While it might have been interesting for a dedicated gaming company to purchase Oculus it might have ultimately limited their potential in regards to the myriad of things that the Rift is capable of. I want games, but I also want virtual tourism. PTSD treatment. End of life quality comfort care improvements. Treatment for a variety of fears. Architectural visualization. Pilot training. Scuba training. The list simply goes on, and on, and on."
...
A)
This is the reverse of what is good and bad.
A peripheral is generic.
OR + <mouse and keyboard>
OR + <gamepad>
etc.
As a peripheral, it's a great visualization element that you can pair with your favorite control scheme.
Soon as it becomes a visualization+control bundle, you're narrowing the audience to folks that like that combo, or annoying people that don't want that combo but are forced to play with it just for the OR.
But then again, maybe this guy is the kind of person that looks back fondly on the power glove, then sure, gimmicky stuff like that must sound great.
B)
Tells me that $2B can do a lot of convincing. Pretty sure I'd be convinced of a lot of things for $2B.
C)
PTSD treatment, scuba training, etc, all these applications are possible with or without Facebook involved.
If a scuba training software company wants to use OR, they can. (Even better so as a peripheral, paired with their own tailored control scheme)
There's no benefit [to the rest of us] to Facebook getting an early foot in the door providing a plethora of OR applications (and along the way patenting the crap out of a plethora of things related, doing its best to make sure smaller specialty companies can eat poo and die). Remember, these days you can draw boxes labeled "provide beneficial user stimulus" and that's good enough to patent.
Granted, facebook can provide these applications with or without OR ownership.
However, if buying an OR causes money to flow to facebook, then facebook will do its best to make sure it has a maximally exclusive foothold over as many OR/VR domains as possible. Which means crushing competition.
I now see OR going the way of many other niche tech companies. (Like Ultimate Ears).
Bought out. For a few years everything looks good.
Then a few years later the quality takes a nose dive, the parent company milks it for as much profit as possible, and the carcass is left to rot as a shell of its former self, eventually fading away as people find replacements that aren't yet compromised, offered by other companies that are still waiting for their turn to be picked apart by 'bottom liners'.
Management doesn't care about company health down the road. That's after they no longer work there, and is irrelevant.
-scheherazade
This comment was edited on Mar 27, 2014, 11:27.