Fair points, Scheherazade. I don't really know what he means by peripheral versus dedicated system, I certainly want it to remain open to all but if they decide that integrating sound is better than us using our own headphones, I would expect them to have their reasons and hear them out, no pun intended.
This is looking longer term than I was, which I've stated in the past but should have made clear in the post you quoted. The future of Oculus was always up in the air and I thought this was inevitable at some point - I'm just surprised by who (not a hardware company) and when (no products released).
With that in mind, I've always been looking at the Oculus Rift in the fairly short term (the next 5 years) and what it leads to with VR in general in the longer term. Whether the Rift would have been relevant in 5 or 10 years was never a big concern personally. Their grass roots were all very lovely and I still wish them well but they've sold my goodwill and any bit of brand loyalty I may have had.
This takeover has accelerated my feeling that the Rift will lose relevance (now more like 2 or 3 years). If they close it off, if they include headphones so they can justify charging more rather than for virtual presence reasons, if they make you sign into Facebook, etc, I will replacing my ageing Oculus Rift CV1 with someone else's VR headset. I just want Facebook to not screw this up until they get a consumer version or two released.
I wouldn't expect Sony to be particularly open with their system either but I could see someone like Razer or Logitech jumping in with 2 feet and catering to the enthusiast market.
Creston wrote on Mar 27, 2014, 11:54:
Yes, cliffyb, I'm sure Notch is EXTREMELY worried about what your irrelevant ass thinks of him.
He's not wrong. I don't expect Notch cares much but IMHO Notch does look a bit childish here.