The cost of Oculus

I'll be honest -- I'm not all that interested in the blow-by-blow of Zenimax v. Oculus proceedings. There's no legal precedent that the case promises to set, and with plenty of other players in the VR game, no obvious wider ramifications should Oculus end up being shut down; there's just a lot of "we say, they say" back-and-forth that won't really make sense until the judge tells us whose version of events is more credible, and whether Oculus gets to stay in business.

That said, it was somewhat interesting to learn how much Facebook paid for Oculus (US$1 billion more than previously reported). More interesting still, though, is the revelation that Facebook are apparently planning to sink another three billion dollars into VR, apparently with no profits in sight.

From digitaltrends.com:

Facebook is planning to pour $3 billion into virtual reality in the next decade in an effort to improve the tech.

The revelations came from the company’s head honcho himself, Mark Zuckerberg, who made the remarks while testifying in a federal court, reports The New York Times. The Facebook founder was surprisingly forthright in his projection for VR — which was released to the masses last year in the form of several devices from the likes of HTC, Sony PlayStation, and Facebook-owned Oculus — claiming the computing platform’s experience isn’t currently “good” enough for general users.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, the admission that VR simply isn't good enough yet, is new; everything up to now has been hype, hype, hype, with the seeming expectation that consumers will stump up hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for tech that has a ton of issues and no real use. All of the VR hardware developers have been full of breathless optimism about the usefulness of their devices until now; Zuckerberg is the first one to admit that VR simply isn't ready for prime time.

Second, this is the first sign we've seen from one of VR's biggest players that they realize just how much more money they're going to have to spend developing VR technology before it actually is ready: VR is going to cost Facebook billions of dollars, on top of the billions of dollars they've already spent, before they expect to see any return to speak of. I guess this is one advantage of having a (former) silicon valley start-up paying your bills: losing money for years on end with only the vaguest promise of profitability somewhere down the line is basically the dot-com playbook, and Facebook is one of the most successful dot-com survivors out there.

Whether Facebook's current shareholders are on board with this strategy, and willing to continue playing along, remains to be seen. If they are, and if Zenimax v. Oculus doesn't end up crippling Facebook's Oculus operation somehow, then Facebook might actually be able to make VR into a thing in a decade or so. It still won't be the current generation of VR tech that becomes a thing (something that some people have been predicting for months), and you still don't have to buy into VR anytime soon, but since there might actually be a next generation of Oculus' VR headset, the tech isn't dead yet.

And if HTC/Valve, Sony, and other VR headset developers are also willing to spend billions on research and development for the next decade, then Rift 2.0 could have plenty of company/competition when that happens.

Now, if Zuckerberg & co. could just see how short-sighted their "walled garden" approach is, when it comes to developing VR as a platform... Ah, well. Billion-dollar baby steps, I guess.