I'm less worried about Facebook fucking this up, than them going 2-3 months down the line, expecting much more than what has come out and then ditch the entire project. Facebook loves to throw millions at nothing and hope to find gold, Oculus is a slow moving train, going up hill, in the dark, on 50 year old rails. They're going at a snail's pace to make sure it works. Facebook on the other hand likes to see change nearly ever quarter and that's where I don't see this meshing very well. Whereas a company like Valve doesn't seem to give two shits about 'when' something gets done and more about the 'what' is getting done, Facebook seems a polar opposite. And as they should being a more traditional profit-based company. But let's face the facts, the possibility of Oculus pulling a profit margin in the first 5 years after release, is slim to none, unless something drastic changes to how we buy and use hardware peripherals.
Now there is definitely room for Facebook to do something special with Oculus but I see it being more service-based rather than hardware, and that may not pan out to well for us, the end consumer. (Conspiracy filled example inc) Think of a situation like this, you get your Oculus VR package home, you rip it open, connect it to your computer and then are told to register a serial code on a Facebook VR site / service. Ignoring how weird this is, you do so and are then told to link your Oculus set with your Facebook profile... Ok, getting weirder, and then after doing that, are greeted with a Facebook VR marketplace, sort of like Steam but only for games that support VR. Let's say you see a game you have on Steam, like Euro Truck Sim 2. You see that it fully supports your headset and so you load up Steam to play the game, start ETS2 and nothing happens on the headset. You check patches, you check your firmware, you check to make sure everything is working, still nothing doing. Then you do what 90% of us do when shit doesn't work, search Google to figure out what the fuck went wrong. Upon searching you find out that the new Rift retail version only supports games purchased on the Facebook VR store... And you can figure out the rest from there.
Now, the above is pure conspiracy, but it's not out of the realm of reason. Facebook is a company, one that has had many shady deals in the past and aren't afraid to do what they need to make something profitable. They're about the Social Media version of EA (done great things for the platform but are about as close you can get to the Evil Dr. Claw). I truly hope that they won't do this, but don't be surprised if this becomes the future of Oculus VR. At the end of the day, I'd keep an eye on Carmack and his reactions over the coming months. While he's said some stupid shit about PC gaming (like piracy was the reason he'd never make another PC game) he's one of the smartest guys we have a porthole to outside the company. If he jumps ship, especially after leaving id, then it's safe to say that we should be a bit worried, but if he sees steady seas ahead of him, then we might as well believe it.
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