Plans that were in the works for Minecraft to have an Oculus Rift-supported version have now ground to a halt, following Oculus Rift's confirmed buyout by social media giant, Facebook. Markus "Notch" Persson wasn't shy about expressing his thoughts on the matter, saying that Facebook creeps him out, and would not be working with them any time soon. He went on to say that he felt Facebook - while excellent pioneers of social networking - were not good for a device he hoped to see grow in the gaming world, having little background in the field of game design.
Quote fromDon’t get me wrong, VR is not bad for social. In fact, I think social could become one of the biggest applications of (Oculus Rift). Being able to sit in a virtual living room and see your friend’s avatar? Business meetings? Virtual cinemas where you feel like you’re actually watching the movie with your friend who is seven time zones away?
But I don’t want to work with social, I want to work with games.
Notch was a strong early supporter of the Oculus Rift, donating $10,000 towards the project's Kickstarter, and personally flying out to meet the Oculus team, to discuss the device, and potential development ideas for its future.
While Oculus support is off the table, a number of competitors have been surfacing in the VR industry of late, any of which may be viable alternatives for Minecrafters eager to see a fully immersive version of the game.
While no official plans to support Oculus currently exist, there is a working (with version 1.6.2) mod that is currently available to the public, called Minecrift, which boasts a number of support features for Oculus users.
What a few people that don't agree with this don't seem to realize, is that the Oculus was originally designed for games. It's whole purpose was games. People got early dev versions and everything, specifically to make games work with it. And then they go and sell it to facebook, a company that has NOTHING to do with proper games. There's no need for the Oculus to have anything to do with facebook. There's nothing on facebook that even makes sense to be on an Oculus.
The only thing I can imagine them doing, is adding some kind of "share to facebook" button, and charging twice the price.
On the bright side, we won't go insane from the unreal physics of Minecraft due to the deep sense of immersion from the Rift.
So if Notch is such an idiot and minecraft and it's community sucks, why are you here?
EA has made some of the buggiest, and frustratingly glitchy games ever made, but those games still sell well.
Apple makes ridiculously overpriced electronic devices, that were made for possibly less than 10$ by some notorious company in china (Foxconn) that provided terrifying working conditions, yet those devices are still universally successful.
Microsoft has had sort of a control-freak/market-manipulation attitude with their OS's, yet they are still the biggest PC company in North America.
What makes Facebook any different?
Oh, and there goes my plans of buying an Oculus rift headset in the near-future... thanks Facebook.
I think you will find that everyone has, in fact, read that article. It is not hard - not hard at all - to read between the lines of why Facebook did this, both as a business decision and as a means of acquiring information. In the times to come, information will be power, quite literally. Facebook has made an extreme long-term investment in buying out OR. They've gotten the jump on a massive chunk of the existing opposition before the competition has really gotten off the ground.
What scares us is their intentions for this technology. They're no different from most of the other communications/media giants that currently exist; you would probably find the same arguments popping up with Microsoft or Google had bought it out. People don't want to be subjected to data mining. For the most part, we value our privacy.
Classic defamation. Seriously, are they paying you for this drivel?
Any of these companies would have caused the unease that you're seeing posts about. Facebook is simply the most blatant about what it does.
Personally, I would have done the same, in Notch's position. Regardless of whether it was Facebook, Google, Microsoft or any of a number of other companies buying it. If a company is known for data mining, I want absolutely nothing to do with it. I would avoid it like the plague it is.
The only thing I'm worried about is some people already got an occulus rift and enjoy Minecraft with it, does it mean its dead for them and they spent their hard earned money on this high tech gadget that won't be compatible with their favorite game anymore ???
My God. People cannot be this stupid.
Do you even have any clue why people are agreeing with Notch? Facebook has been doing some shady . Oculus creators work for Facebook now. Facebook can now change features and such for Oculus. They can extend their unethical business practices to the Oculus.
Anyone who's saying that Notch's making a bad business decision doesn't have any understanding of what business ethics is. Ethics is an important part of business.