I'm Not Kidding: Facebook Buys Oculus Rift for $2 Billion

Facebook has announced today that they've bought virtual reality company Oculus Rift for $2 billion.

Yeap.

The money has been spread around: $400 million in cash, 2.31 million in Facebook common stock, $300 million earn-out in cash and stock going elsewhere. The deal is going to be finalized in Q2 of 2014.

In a statement, Brendon Irbe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR, said that, "We are excited to work with Mark [Zuckerberg] and the Facebook team to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world...We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it's only just the beginning."

Here's Zuckerberg's full take:

I'm excited to announce that we've agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology.

Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. For the past few years, this has mostly meant building mobile apps that help you share with the people you care about. We have a lot more to do on mobile, but at this point we feel we're in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences.

This is where Oculus comes in. They build virtual reality technology, like the Oculus Rift headset. When you put it on, you enter a completely immersive computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away. The incredible thing about the technology is that you feel like you're actually present in another place with other people. People who try it say it's different from anything they've ever experienced in their lives.

Oculus's mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences.

Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won't be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there's a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We're going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.

But this is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.

This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.

These are just some of the potential uses. By working with developers and partners across the industry, together we can build many more. One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.

Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming and we have a chance to build it together. I can't wait to start working with the whole team at Oculus to bring this future to the world, and to unlock new worlds for all of us.

I'm sincerely hoping that the purchase doesn't leave in the dust the developers that have been working on the Rift all this time, but this is going to make a lot of waves. It doesn't help that my co-editor jokingly mentions Farmville VR as a title for the technology (foreshadowing).

Jokes aside, the last two major purchases FB made didn't change squat, so strong chance that the same applies here, and that the money is being used to fast track the process in time for the release later this year. This is big, and considering that Sony is closing the gap with their own VR tech, it's going to be an interesting time for the both of them.

-- Facebook, Kotaku, Destructoid