As many have probably heard by now, Facebook recently announced a surprising acquisition of Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. This has big implications not just for Facebook, who will now be expanding into new territory, but also for developers who have/had plans to develop games for the Oculus Rift.
Now according to a recent tweet by Minecraft’s creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, it seems that he did not take the acquisition too well and has since announced the cancellation of Minecraft for the Oculus Rift. “We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.”
Interestingly enough we did not even know Minecraft for the Oculus Rift was in the works, although in the past we have seen how developers have modded the game to make it compatible with the virtual reality headset, so we guess an officially optimized version would be nice. Not to mention there would probably be features designed specifically for the Oculus Rift in mind.
We’re not sure why Facebook has had such negative reactions to its acquisitions. When the company announced their plans to acquire WhatsApp, many reacted negatively and were worried that Facebook would screw up a perfectly good app. Perhaps it could have been Facebook’s bungled ventures in the past with Facebook phones that has caused the public to lose confidence in the company.
It could be that Facebook’s zeal to monetize everything that could also have the public worried that by inserting ads into their products, it would ruin an otherwise good experience. However Facebook does have a lot of resources which could spur the development of the Oculus Rift and have it compete against the likes of Sony’s own VR technology, Project Morpheus, which incidentally enough is another avenue that Notch and the folks at Mojang could explore as an alternative.
What do you guys think? Do you think Facebook might somehow mess up the Oculus Rift, or does Notch have nothing to worry about?
Filed in . Read more about Minecraft, Oculus Rift, Virtual Reality (VR) and Wearable Tech.