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Friday, 27 June 2014 12:07

Oculus Needs Manufacturing Partners or they could end up going nowhere

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Facebook bought the startup company Oculus VR for reasons that they have not quite made public, but it has been assumed that it was to help them get into the gaming industry as well as expand Facebook in a new way. So far we have heard a few rumors about what this goal might be including a vast virtual world that takes online social interaction to a new level.

The problem is that Oculus is no big enough to actually produce the headset they are famous for to the general public. They have built a few for development and also to send out to potential investors (and developers), but they are not a manufacturing company. It is one of the reasons we felt that Oculus was a company destined to be bought by someone, we just did not expect it to be Facebook. Facebook is also not a hardware manufacturing company and really cannot help Oculus to get their devices into the public’s hands.  

This leaves the pair in an odd position, even though there is nothing that really uses Oculus, there are also not enough built headsets to get out to people if there was. To get around this Oculus is actively seeking out partners that can do all of the heavy lifting for them. This means that while your future Oculus Rift headset might bear the logo it will likely be made by a company like Pegatron, Foxconn or another manufacturer. One odd candidate that is rumored to be interested is Sony. Sony has shown quite a bit of interest in Oculus and they have had something of a technology exchange where both companies showed of their designs, although nothing else has been announced about that meeting.

In the meantime Oculus is moving forward from a technology standpoint by grabbing up a few companies that build gaming controllers. We are sure these are to add on to their existing technology portfolio and also to develop more advanced controllers to play with their existing headset. Sadly, if they cannot get a partner to build these devices for them they are still going to be stuck in the garage.

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Read 2501 times Last modified on Friday, 27 June 2014 12:10
Sean Kalinich

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