The Facebook Oculus VR sale has finally closed, four months after the acquisition was announced.
Back in March, Facebook made the rather unexpected announcement that it had acquired Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift, for a whopping $2 billion (£1.17 billion).
That sale has now closed, moving Facebook into the consumer electronics industry in a huge way.
“We’re looking forward to an exciting future together, building the next computing platform and reimagining the way people communicate,” said a joint statement released by both companies.
Oculus VR has just released the second developer kit (DK2) of the Oculus Rift to early pre-order developers, but neither the company nor Facebook has committed to a general market release date for the device as yet.
The Oculus Rift was originally set up by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey and CEO Brendan Iribe as a Kickstarter project, with the first developer kits shipping to early adopters in 2012.
Since then, Oculus VR has been tweaking the virtual reality headset with hardware upgrades, with the current DK2 offering dual 920 x 1080p HD displays, lower latency, higher framerate and low persistence along with full six dot positional tracking.
Currently, Oculus VR is focusing on delivering the Oculus Rift for gaming experiences, but Facebook and CEO/Founder Mark Zuckerberg have bigger ideas on the horizon.
“Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,” said Zuckerberg when announcing the acquisition. “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”
Facebook’s plan is to use the Oculus Rift to allow “billions of people to connect in a way never before possible” and sees the headset used “for many other experiences” including sports, education and healthcare.
However, despite the boosted funding Oculus VR and the Rift will receive, developers and gaming enthusiasts have been more than a little worried about the acquisition and the direction the company could take under Facebook’s control.
Read more: 5 secret projects Oculus VR and Facebook could be working on
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
