El Pit wrote on Mar 26, 2014, 13:27:
Why buy Oculus?
For the patents? To either work on some own version of FacebookGlasses in answer to GoogleGlasses? Or to hinder/prevent the development of GoogleGlasses (an other augmented reality devices) because of some violation of the now acquired patents? Or FB heard that some other big player (MS, Google, Apple...) wanted to buy Oculus and they decided to rather buy Oculus themselves even if they don't need them? Just to hinder some competitor? Or to just expand into new markets and technologies? Or/and to impress their shareholders and the Wall Street vampires to add to their shareholder value? Or to get a foot into pc/console markets? Buy Oculus, buy Steam or ActiBlizz or EA, call it FacebookGames, build consoles (or just take some of the Steam Consoles), add the Oculus, and become a big player? Who knows... But saying it doesn't make sense is actually what doesn't make sense. There are many possibilities for Big Money Facebook. I still don't like this, but I'm just a gamer.
None of your possibilities make sense.
I know that sounds like a smartass comment, but:
1) "For the patents." What patents? Which could they possibly have that couldn't be argued with?
2) "Answer to GoogleGlass." The products have nothing in common. At all. One you look through, one you look into.
3) "Hinder development of augmented devices" but this isn't an augmented device.
4) "To prevent a competitor..." $2billion is a LOT to blow on thwarting a competitor without hoping for gain. They're a public company, they can't do things like that
5) "Expand into new markets and technologies" this is assuredly the reason, but they could have built their own OR for significantly less than $2 billion
6) "Impress shareholders." If this was the goal they failed miserably. Wall Street has creamed them
7) "Get into the PC/console markets" OR needs to be coded directly for, so it's unlikely that consoles can support it. PCs can, but again, making your own OR competitor would take much less than $2 billion
8) "Buy Steam, ActiBlizz or EA." They have no chance of buying Steam, and while they could buy the other two, each has more value than OR, so it would make sense to buy one of them first
9) "Build consoles" so why need OR? Why not buy a company with some kind of knowledge of building consoles?
The real bottom line is that there's no way it takes two billion dollars to make an Oculus Rift competitor, and Oculus Rift isn't doing anything special to add that much to that price tag. Give me $50 million today and I'll deliver whatever Oculus Rift has done thus far by the end of the year.