Tag Archives: oculus

When you hear talk of a border wall, you typically picture an actual, physical construction. But that's not the case for Palmer Luckey. The Oculus co-founder and his startup Anduril Industries have been working on a virtual wall -- one complete with...

Enchanting adventure Moss might have launched as a PlayStation VR exclusive, but developer Polyarc has confirmed it won't be tethered to Sony's console any longer. It's finally available on both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive for $30.

Where will Facebook's Oculus take VR next?

The Oculus Connect developer conference is back for its fifth year of chasing the VR dream. Facebook VP or VR Hugo Barra announced that the company’s virtual reality-centric conference would be returning to San Jose on September 26 and 27. In past years, Oculus has used the conference to reveal its latest prototype hardware and to announce new software upgrades. This year, VR took center stage at Facebook’s F8 developer conference with the company using the event to launch the $199 Oculus Go standalone headset while also showcasing its latest prototype “Half Dome.” It will be interesting to see what VR announcements are saved for Oculus at its own developer-centric event and whether they use the opportunity to talk more about prototypes like its positionally tracked “Santa Cruz” standalone, which they have discussed the development of for the past two years. Registration details for OC5 aren’t available yet but the application has typically gone live in mid-summer.

“Despite many pronouncements that 2016 was the year of VR, a more apt word for virtual reality might be absence,” The Economist observed caustically last summer, noting that during that year forecasts of combined sales of VR hardware and software dropped from $5.1bn to $3.6bn to the harsh reality of $1.8bn. But hey, one rough holiday season does not an industry make, right? Surely in 2017 things began to — — oh. “ Shock Stat: In 2017, VR Headset Shipments For Most Top Brands Went DOWN Compared To 2016 .” So much for the many predictions that VR headset shipments would grow exponentially for years. Crow appears to be the appetizer for nearly every industry dinner these days. But that was before the Oculus Go , right? Except … the Go seems to have sold at most a quarter of a million units in its first few weeks, far behind the comparably priced Nintendo Switch released months earlier, and as I write this languishes well outside the top 20 of Amazon’s “Video Games > Accessories” bestsellers. I mean. These aren’t terrible numbers. Sony’s PlayStation VR has sold almost 3 million units! … which is to say, it’s reached almost 4% of PlayStation owners. But aren’t VR and AR supposed to be the Next Big Thing, not the Next Little Niche? And doesn’t that mean their reach is supposed to grow exponentially , not linearly? AR is in everyone’s hands, of course, courtesy of Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCore, Facebook’s AR Studio, etc. But, quick, name a popular/successful AR smartphone app a) that isn’t Pokémon GO b) doesn’t involve furniture! If I’m pointing accusatory fingers at anyone I’m pointing them at myself. I too expected VR/AR to be much further along by now.

Oculus wants VR to bring its users into magical worlds dreamed up by game developers, but the company also needs people to see the headset as a way to access the far corners of the real world alongside others. The Oculus Venues app is launching today for the company’s standalone Go headset, as well as the Gear VR. Venues marks a central hub for live events on the service, putting users in a shared social space to watch sporting events, concerts and shows. Facebook isn’t setting up cameras at these events, rather, they’re working with partners to put on these events, including NextVR, AEG Presents, the MLB and Lionsgate. The app was announced earlier this month at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, but Venues wasn’t quite ready for primetime. Today, Oculus is sharing the first chunk of events, all scheduled for the summer, and it seems pretty robust. Events include concerts with artists like Chromeo, movie screenings of films like Reservoir Dogs, MLB games and soccer matches, as well as plenty of comedy shows. For the most part, events seem spaced out every couple of days or so, but this is still a lot of VR content for headset owners coming from the service’s first few partners. The first event is a Vance Joy concert tonight at 7:30 PST. Here’s a full list below, but it’s tiny so break out the spectacles.

In the lead up to the EU's May 25th GDPR enforcement deadline, companies like Facebook, Oculus and Google are all updating their privacy policies to maintain compliance with the guidelines (which can be enforced with some stiff penalties). Now Spotif...

Last month, Oculus announced updates to its privacy policies, likely to comply with GDPR, which goes into effect this Friday. Ahead of that deadline, a new feature is available today for users worldwide: My Privacy Center is a dashboard showing what...

Hasbro's first board game arrives in Oculus Rooms. Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly are next.

Downloadable extras are a staple of the gaming world on PCs, phones and consoles, but not in VR. With Oculus' devices, you've either had to buy another app or hope the creator would be kind enough to throw in thew new content for free. Not anymore:...

Last year Disney revealed that a Marvel VR game is on the way for Oculus headsets, and things have been fairly quiet since. Marvel Powers United VR will allow for four-player co-op as gamers take on the roles of various heroes in the Marvel universe...

It might be as little as a pair of hands and feet, researchers in Japan found after recording subjects who wore an Oculus Rift headset.

Note: This is the final article in a three-part series on valuation thoughts for common sectors of venture-capital investment. The first article, which attempts to make sense of the SaaS revenue multiple, can be found  here ; the second, on public marketplaces can be found  here . Over the past year, the VC-backed hardware category got a big boost — Roku was the best-performing tech IPO of 2017 and Ring was acquired by Amazon for a price rumored to exceed $1 billion. In addition to selling into large, strategic markets, both companies have excellent business models. Ring sells a high-margin subscription across a high percentage of its customer base and Roku successfully monetizes its 19 million users through ads and licensing fees. In the context of these splashy exits, it is interesting to consider the key factors that have made for valuable hardware companies against a backdrop of an investment sector that has often been maligned through the years, as I’m sure we’ve all heard the trope that “hardware is hard.” Despite this perception, hardware investment has grown much faster than the overall VC market since 2010, as shown below. Source:  TechCrunch A large part of this investment growth has to do with the fact that we’ve seen larger exits in hardware over the past few years than ever before. Starting with Dropcam’s*   $555 million acquisition in 2014, we’ve seen a number of impressive outcomes in the category, from large acquisitions like Oculus ($2 billion), Beats ($3 billion) and Nest ($3.2 billion) to IPOs like GoPro ($1.2 billion), Fitbit ($3 billion) and Roku* ($1.3 billion)**. Unfortunately for the sector, a few of these companies have underperformed since exit; notably, GoPro and Fitbit have both cratered in the public markets.   As of April 3, 2018, both stocks traded at less than 1x trailing revenue, a far cry from the multiples of forward revenue given to other tech companies. Roku, on the other hand, continues to perform as a stock market darling, trading at approximately 6x trailing revenue and a market cap of $3.1 billion. What sets them so far apart? The simple answer is their business model — Roku generates a significant amount of high gross margin platform revenue, while GoPro and Fitbit are reliant on continued hardware sales to drive future business, a revenue stream that has been stagnant to declining

FramesDirect makes prescription lenses specifically for the Oculus Go.

Most of us don't think about rhinos on a daily basis. We're too consumed with maintaining inbox-zero or making sure our cat is healthy. When the last male white northern rhino died in March, the impact on most of us was minimal because the now-extinc...