A big stink was made about Oculus' $2 billion sale to Facebook last month, but now that that's out of the way, Oculus is ready to start getting back to business again.
In an interview with Develop, Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell talked about the headset's commercial release, Sony's Project Morpheus, and a number of other topics. First off, what about that competition from Sony?
"So with Sony getting into the mix, it really does mean that there's going to be a bigger audience, there's going to be more people who can buy VR games," Mitchell said. "Sony, I'm sure - I hope - is going to start funding content, and hopefully some of that will come to the PC side. And at the end of the day, even if they focus on PlayStation and we're on PC, there's no doubt that we'll have more people using VR than ever before in the history of virtual reality, so we're pretty excited about the whole plan."
So that's humble of him. Between him, Phil Spencer and Shuhei Yoshida, the leaders in the game business all seem to be treating each other nicely these days. Ubisoft had recently expressed some displeasure with getting into the VR market, and Mitchell addressed that as well:
"So, I think when you're a big publisher like Ubisoft, EA or Activision, you're in a really tough spot," he said. "Ubisoft has actually been one of the most innovative companies out there; they've done a lot of really neat stuff on new hardware platforms like the Wii. But if you're one of those guys, now is not necessarily the time to bet on bringing something like an Assassin's Creed to 50,000 people. But if Sony sells four million VR headsets and Oculus sells another four million, and there's eight million people you can sell to - all of whom are incredibly enthusiastic about VR - that's something a lot of companies will definitely want to work on."
But the most important question is, when the heck will people get to "Like" their friends' posts with their eyes?! (Oh, and play games too.)
"We're actually very close to locking down a consumer spec right now," Mitchell said. "This is the last development kit before the consumer product - although one of our goals is to have the consumer product double as a development kit as well. So you can buy a Rift and play with it, or develop with it. We are getting close and we're pretty deep into that process. We're going to get a little feedback from the community on DK2, but it'll have to be fast and furious at the beginning because then we're going to lock down and probably head into launch. We're close."
So that's all some pretty exciting info, and Facebook jokes aside, Mitchell and the Oculus team still seem very focused on the game market. Are you still bitter over the Facebook purchase, or are you ready to forgive Oculus now? Check out the full interview over at Develop and then let us know in the comments.
