WNA

Facebook is acquiring Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology. Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR will marry the social network with gaming.

Facebook now has more than one billion people accessing its services on mobile devices, with 20 per cent of time spent in mobile apps globally devoted to use of Facebook services.

“Imagine enjoying a courtside 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,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Facebook.

“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.”

“The Oculus VR headset 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.”

Zuckerberg made it clear that he’s not worried about the likes of the PlayStation or Xbox

“In order to build a really big computing platform, there are a bunch of important use cases that you need to support. … We’ve measured this more with mobile, but what we see is that about 40 percent of the time that people spend overall is in gaming. And about 40 percent is also spent in social communications. About half of that is in Facebook, which is nice.

What we basically believe is that unlike the Microsoft or Sony pure console strategies, if you want to make this a real computing platform, you need to fuse both of those things together.”