According to a report by TechCrunch, Brendan Iribe, a co-founder of Oculus, has left Facebook following the company’s decision to cancel the next in line Rift 2. Apparently, he was unhappy with the direction Facebook wanted to take in the development of Rift 2, trying to make this device widely available, but with less improvements.
A disagreement that doesn’t seem to be a good sign
Based on what we know from TC, Iribe and the other FB executives did not really have the same ideas about what Rift 2 should be. It seems that Iribe wasn’t really excited about a “race to the bottom” for the VR market. There were not so many details known about the headset, but some improvements, such as a wireless add-on or a higher resolution display, would have been some of the expected changes. We’ve heard of the “race to the bottom” rumor before and, in case it is true, then it could be especially worrying in VR. As much as we want for technology to be more and more affordable, maybe it’s not such a really good idea to create cheap VR headsets that would have weak capabilities.
What else do we need to know for now
One of the main concerns of Rift’s fans would be that the company may try to direct their attention towards some different places than the PC ecosystem. Nevertheless, it’s not a surprise that such an expensive peripheral did not make the executives too excited, particularly since Rift does not really have intrusive advertising opportunities. Facebook has also confirmed that they do plan to release a future version of Rift. There is a possibility, of course, that Iribe did not know for sure what kind of headset he intended to bring to the market. We will just need to wait and see what happens next.
Frances might be just at the beginning of her career, but after attending a technical school, she has a fresh perspective on today’s technology. She contributes to the site with tech news.