Palmer Readme: Why sell Oculus to Facebook?

If Oculus had enough money to develop its own consumer virtual reality platform, why would the company sell itself to Facebook? Let Palmer Luckey come out and answer it. Q: Why did you decide to agree to Facebook's offer? Did Sony's virtual reality products play a role in this? Illeboux: We've been talking about this deal for a while, and at first we just had contact with Mark and his team. After that, they were very interested to see the demo video of our products, and we showed them, and then we started talking about the future of the product, and Facebook was excited about it. Mark told us at the time: "What can we do for you?" or any form of cooperation, investment, or publicity? How can we be part of this vision and help continue to improve virtual reality technology? At the end of the meeting, we still met regularly, began to understand each other, and generated a sense of trust. After that, we told Mark and his team about the future of the product, the huge impact it might have, the company's top talent recruitment strategy around the world and the desire to cover the product to as many people as possible. Then, Mark told me: "I think we can help you in this respect." You know exactly what you're doing in the game area, and we don't need to touch it, but I'm sure Facebook can help you in other ways. "In fact, that's the main thing we're talking about. Oculus is now very focused on gaming community building, and the acquisitions and partnerships with Facebook can help us bring virtual reality platforms to more people faster, better and cheaper. Q: You've had 100 million of dollars in funding before, and Lurch told me a year ago that I didn't plan to sell the company. So what has Facebook provided you with the resources to make such a big shift? What's the difference between what Facebook can do and what you can do with the 100 million dollars you've harvested? Lurch: Facebook agrees with our vision for virtual reality technology. In fact, there are many companies that are very interested in this technology and have different ideas about our product roadmap, but if they buy it, Oculus can only be manipulated by others. However, mark trusts our vision of virtual reality, and Oculus can continue to operate independently. That is to say, we can invoke more resources to continue to realize our dreams. Q: What exactly did you get through the agreement with Markeberg? What is the difference between what you can do and what you can do with the 100 million dollars that you've harvested? Illeboux: When you look at what we're doing, we find that the hardware business needs a lot of investment. It's very difficult and very expensive because toMaking the landing of our hardware products including PCs, game consoles or mobile platforms requires a lot of investment money. We have had a lot of outside investment before, which is good. But we are now looking to expand our front lines and want to buy parts makers or trade with the world's largest companies that recognise our ideals. Moreover, these companies have even changed the established rules for us to cooperate with other companies in the past. So now we can confidently tell others "hey, it's not just that we've been stuck in this field." The risks and funding problems we face have been greatly reduced and we are able to accept larger orders and other requirements. "I think that's the biggest value of this deal," he said. Lurch: Another problem at the moment is that most of our current business revolves around the mobile phone market, but most of the hardware we use isn't necessarily the right platform. Therefore, with the development of virtual reality technology, our correct approach is to develop hardware around the virtual reality technology itself. Also, excellent virtual reality technology requires the use of a completely different technical standard for smartphones. As Brendan previously said, hardware is a very, very expensive business, and the design of new virtual reality technology is also very expensive. So the Facebook deal will enable us to achieve goals that were not entirely possible before. We want to offer low-cost, excellent products to consumers, and the deal is clearly a panacea for this dream. Q: So, will this deal change your roadmap for the future? Does that mean your product design cycle will be shorter and cheaper? Lurch: Yes, this will make our product design cycle shorter and cheaper than before. Our roadmap for the future has remained unchanged, but now we will be able to do more of what we want to do. Both in the short and long term, the deal will make Oculus Rift better and cheaper. In addition, we will have sufficient resources to carry out some originally unrealistic business. It is never easy to sell virtual reality technology to developers because they need to convince investors that they are capable of developing excellent virtual reality games and convincing them that virtual reality technology will be a big success. But now, we will be able to devote more money to game development, and you will see that we will increase our investment in content and distribution in the future. Q: Do you have a long-term plan to build a virtual reality platform with Facebook? Illeboux: Apart from this partnership, we are now unable to comment on other matters. But I'm sure you'll see in the future that we're releasing more product forecasts, and they're definitely going to have a bigger, better, and faster impact than today's products. At the same time, we are excited to be able to join the world's largest and fastest-growing company into a new era of virtual reality, which is the main reason for us to finalize the deal. We are a rising rocket, and now we are tying ourselves to another larger rocket, and will take it to the worldBetter virtual reality experience.