The Oculus Rift was a revolutionary piece of technology when it first burst onto the scene back in 2016. Its release was supposed to herald a whole new age of gaming; one where we would all be strapped into virtual worlds and could experience things that normal consoles couldn’t deliver.
However, despite the Oculus being an amazing technological leap forward, it just hasn’t really been the breakout success that a lot of people had thought it would be. As a result, Jack McCauley, one of the co-founders of Oculus, feels like Facebook may have missed the boat, and that Oculus will never be a true mainstream success.
McCauley, who left Oculus back in 2015, was interviewed recently by CNBC, and he gave his rather pessimistic view on Facebook’s VR venture. He said that their biggest mistake was positioning the Oculus primarily as a gaming device, as he believes that VR gaming simply isn’t that big of a draw.
“If we were gonna sell, we would’ve sold”, McCauley stated bluntly. “Video games have not evolved into a 3-D experience for a number of reasons. I don’t know what kind of application it would be for VR that would keep players plugged in for six hours like they do with game consoles.”
He has a point, as having a VR headset strapped to your face for hours on end can be a pretty uncomfortable experience. Combined with the facts that the helmets are generally pretty expensive, and the games that can be developed can cause motion sickness and are usually pretty limited due to factors like living room sizes, it does seem like McCauley could be right about Oculus not being able to break through.
Additionally, Oculus’ sales numbers haven’t been amazing. The Oculus Rift has only moved 547,000 devices since 2018. As well, other models such as the Oculus Go and the Oculus Quest have only sold 2 million and 1.1 million units, respectively.
Even though the sales numbers aren’t setting the world on fire, Facebook has more than enough money to keep pumping into the Oculus brand to keep it going for as long as they want. On top of releasing new Oculus models, the company is also looking to buy up as many developers as they can to create new games for their headsets, so it looks like they’re not done pushing virtual reality just yet.
McCauley has mostly stayed away from virtual reality, and video games for the past few years, as he’s currently running his own research facility for new technology. However, as someone who spent a lot of time working in the gaming industry, his opinions are worth paying attention to. He feels that Facebook is throwing their money away by continuing to pump more funds into VR, and time will tell whether or not he’s right.
