Oculus co-founder says he didn’t want a deal with Apple, chose Facebook instead

“After receiving criticism for the surprise announcement that Facebook is buying the developer of the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, Oculus VR, for £1.2 billion, the co-founder of Oculus has defended the sale, claiming that the deal with Facebook is better for the company than a deal with Apple would have been,” Ashleigh Allsopp reports for Macworld UK.

“Understandably, many Oculus watchers expressed concerns about the sale of the company to Facebook, as it raises many questions about the future of the virtual reality pioneer,” Allsopp reports, “which has previously been largely focused on gaming applications.”

MacDailyNews Take: And making wearers of their product look like absolute barmpots.

“In reply to a Reddit user who said, ‘Just promise me there will be no specific Facebook tech tie-ins,’ Luckey wrote: ‘I promise. Why would we want to sell to someone like [Microsoft] or Apple? So they can tear the company apart and use the pieces to build their own vision of virtual reality, one that fits whatever current strategy they have? Not a chance,'” Allsopp reports. “But the Facebook deal has already scared off some other deals that Oculus was in the process of making with companies including Notch, the developer of Minecraft, which has been working on a version of the popular game for Oculus Rift. ‘I just cancelled that deal,’ Notch wrote on Twitter. ‘Facebook creeps me out.'”

Read more in the full article here.

Related article:
Facebook buys Oculus: Why Apple hasn’t missed the boat on virtual-reality – March 27, 2014