When I read that yesterday, I was pretty shocked at first. No matter how you tun it, the OR guys sold out, plain and simple. They didn't do it because it gives them more freedom, they didn't do it because of the things they can do together with facebook, they did it because someone was waving 2 fucking billion dollars in front of their eyes and they couldn't resist. However, "they" is not only the founders, the guys that were running the kickstarter, but they is also, and in this decision probably mostly, the venture capital company that gave them 75 million bucks for a share of the company which is not revealed to my understanding.
You can imagine that the VC company has been pushing very hard for this transaction to work out - and they are the ones bringing out the champagne right now. They raised their investment of 75M$ to probably 500M$ in 4 months. That's quite an ROI.
So, let's try and see the positive things:
- Like Zuckerberg or not, but so far the big acquisitions of him in the past were not fucked up right away. I mean I don't use it, but apparently instagram still works and even got better. Same for Whatsapp. Same story for the smaller acquisitions FB did but you don't read so much about in the papers. So far, it looks like they have long term goals, and don't necessarily butcher up any company they buy. So no need to panick just yet.
- The VC company is probably out of the company now. While I'm not one condemning VCs, they have one purpose - buy low, sell high. Their sole purpose is to raise the value of the company and sell it to the highest bidder. To be honest, in that regard, that trade wasn't that bad - I prefer FB, that's not just in for the monetary needs, to a VC company.
- Facebook does have more resources, and they do have the chance to bring this to the mainstream market. Maybe even cheaper. Because FB's interest will not be to make money from selling the device. They have the financial power to sell it with no profit, for long term strategy reasons.
- No matter what FBs long term strategy is, it most likely overlaps with the gamers need a lot. High resolution? Check. Low Latency? Check. Immersiveness? Check. There is no reason why Facebook should try and make it worse.
As long as the hardware is good, I don't care if you can "connect with people and watch virtual football together". Worst case, we'll need open source drivers for it.
Edit: Best case, Zuckerberg is a gamer, just like us, and he likes to push it forward, just like us.
