Facebook Purchases Oculus

It was a bit of a shock to the gaming world when Sony announced “Project Morpheus” last week, its own virtual reality headset in development. The first question on many lips was “why not just work with Oculus?” After the news today, it seems that question has been answered.

Facebook, you read it correctly, has bought Oculus, the forerunner of virtual reality technology, in a deal reportedly valued up to $2 billion. The deal, which is set to close sometime in the second quarter of 2014, is broken down into $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock. Unfortunately, in the business world, this has meant quite a dip for the social media giant whose stock took a heavy fall following the announcement. Now, this is not the first time Facebook stock has taken a nosedive; it dipped considerably more when the company announced the $16 billion deal to buy mobile messaging company WhatsApp earlier this year.

Now, what does this mean for the VR company? Well, nothing major yet. Oculus will still be run as an independent company (founders of the company called it a “partnering”). Their headquarters in Irvine, California will remain intact and the focus is remaining as the flagship product in development: the Rift. The device, which currently has over 75,000 development kits ordered, was previewed at last year’s E3 conference to rave reviews and the company hopes to “change gaming forever.” The Oculus team is hopeful, stating this partnership will “ensure that the Oculus platform is coming.”

As far as the social media company’s interest in the device, founder Mark Zuckerberg made a statement on his site stating their “mission is to make the world more open and connected.” He references the mobile platforms built over the past and looking forward to the future.

If you’d like to do a bit of reading on your own and hear what each of the companies had to say about this deal, you can read from the Oculus team over on the Oculus VR Blog and Zuckerberg’s statement is available for your viewing pleasure/liking/sharing on (where else?) Facebook.

Tell us what you think! Is this the end of virtual reality as we know it? Or did things just get a whole lot more real in the reality game?

More to follow!