14 DAY TRIAL // Brendan Iribe, one of the co-founder of the Oculus Rift, says that he and his fellow executives initially had no intention of selling their company but they were convinced after a marathon session of negotiations that took place at the Facebook headquarters over a three day period.
He explains to Venture Beat that, "We locked ourselves up in the Facebook HQ and did the deal. I have been through a few of these deals now and they usually take months. This was done in three days. That’s incredible. That’s their commitment to moving fast. We are moving fast and getting together to make the next computing platform."
Mark Zuckerberg is described as being particularly interested in new tech, especially in the geek and the gaming communities, and convinced the team at Oculus Rift that they could benefit from being acquired.
Iribe says that gaming will remain at the core of all future development for the virtual reality headset, but Facebook is interested in how the device might be used in the future for more social experiences, especially after it becomes more mainstream and the overall price comes down.
The developer acknowledges that the two companies do not seem to go together very well.
He adds, "If I were to read the headline, I would be confused about why it would be a good thing. We’ve already said quite a bit. We’re going to have more good news about what we will be able to do now. We are working with Facebook, and we can’t announce it yet."
He also says that most developers who use the Oculus Rift for their own titles have been positive about the deal, with the exception being Notch, who decided to cancel the VR version of indie hit Minecraft after the announcement was made.
The official deal will be completed later in spring and the price of the Oculus Rift company is set at 2 billion dollars (1.55 billion Euro), part in cash and part in shares.
At the Game Developer Conference 2014, the company revealed the second version of the development kit for the device and a full consumer version of the device is expected to be launched before the end of the year.
At the moment, Sony is also working on a VR solution for the PlayStation 4 home console, called Project Morhpeus, which is also set to be launched in 2014, but will not be offered on the PC.