Facebook Buys Oculus: Is Mark Zuckerberg Planning a Virtual World with Oculus?

Facebook Buys Oculus

As you may have seen in the news in the past few days Mr Zuckerberg has once again drawn the large Facebook wallet from his pocket. “Facebook Buys Oculus” was all over the news this week; making it the latest acquisition of Facebook’s. The Oculus is deal is worth approximately $2 billion; made up of $400 million in cash and then a further $1.6 billion in Facebook common stock shares. The highly valued company is a leader in immersive virtual technology concentrating on the gaming sector.

Oculus’s journey was given a major boost back in August 2012 when founder Palmer Luckey reached out to the crowd funding platform Kickstarter. Oculus smashed their $250,000 target and raised a very impressive $2.4 million from 9522 individuals (see in the image below). More so in the past year Spark Partners and Matrix Partners both had invested a further $19 million each. Since the deal has broken they have reported that their stakes are now worth in the region of $380 million giving the two private equity firms a 20 fold return on their investment!

Facebook claim that Oculus have received more than 75,000 pre orders for the latest headsets priced at $350 dollars to be shipped in July. This amounts to just over $26 million in revenues, though this is a relatively hefty figure this would have to be duplicated 76 times over to make the $2 Billion spent by Facebook. This clearly shows that Facebook have big plans for Oculus in the future. The future of Oculus poses a very controversial question whereby many are concerned with the ramifications this deal proposes for video gaming orientation of the company. For example a couple years down the line ask yourself the question whether or not you think Oculus’s full attention will be on video gaming? If I was hedging my bets I would think not with social networking Facebook giants at the helm.

Although Antonio Rodriguez, the general partner at Matrix who led the deal said “The Oculus guys have a clear roadmap. The only thing that I see changing is that Facebook will be able to help them get it to market sooner. What Mark has proven with two other companies (Instagram and WhatsApp), is how he let them operate completely independently.”

Zuckerberg commenting on the deal with Oculus said “Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow. Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”

We will have to wait and see what the future holds for Oculus but it is inevitable that Facebook have greater aspirations planned than just gaming for this exciting project.

To read more about Oculus Click Here.