I just got a midterm back and the grade is shockingly bad, much like the subject of this tech news story:
1. Facebook buys Oculus VR
In gaming, the future has always been rock solid — virtual reality. Games are already visually breathtaking and quasi-realistic, so the natural next giant technological leap is full immersion, 100 percent interactivity.
No, not the Wiimote. I’m talking technology so impressive and complex it made two people feel like they had switched genders.* Just enough surreallness to feel like a video game, but enough clarity to feel frighteningly real.**
*Note: the link leads a video that contains nudity (it’s about gender-switching, duh). So, NSFW.
** Note: the video of Markiplier playing “Alone,” a horror game for Oculus Rift, is legitimately scary. You’ve been warned.
That technology is Oculus Rift — a wildly successful Kickstarter that drew such worldwide support from fans and developers alike that it seemed to be an almost guaranteed success. In fact, the final version of the dev kits for Oculus Rift were delivered March 19. It seemed the future was closer than ever
Well, Facebook bought the future on Tuesday for $2 billion.
Yes, Mark Zuckerberg just threw down a couple billion to buy what many considered to be the future of not only video games, but virtual reality itself.
If you’re concerned, you’re not alone. Many Oculus Rift fans and developers took to the Internet to express their outrage that the social networking giant had purchased the beloved item.
Notch, creator of the wildly popular “Minecraft” game, canceled development on the Rift version, saying Facebook “creeps me out.” Not an insane worry, as the company has long struggled with privacy, ads, personal information and other topics.
But Zuck and Co. say they won’t be changing much about the device.
“Oculus’s mission is to enable you to experience the impossible. Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences,” Zuckerberg said in a blog post following the announcement. “Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won’t be changing and we hope to accelerate.”
So maybe the deal isn’t so bad after all. Oculus VR wasn’t struggling for cash, but an extra $2 billion would really help the startup compete with tech giants like Sony, who just unveiled its answer to virtual reality — Project Morpheus.
The move is good for Facebook too. Its transition to mobile devices hasn’t been smooth, and it isn’t as dominant there as it was on desktop computers. By purchasing Rift, Facebook is cementing itself in the center of what it believes is the next version of the mobile web.
Let’s just hope Farmville doesn’t make the switch.
2. HTC re-does the One
In the past on Tech with Taylor, I’ve happily reported on rumors, spec leaks and the like, mainly because it’s interesting to see what mammoth corporations are thinking about releasing into the hands of consumers every year.
Unfortunately, leaks have reached a point where everyone on the Internet knows every single detail about every single device ever being released. So the reason my readers never saw me report on HTC’s next flagship smartphone is because, well, everyone already knew what it was.
But it’s now been officially revealed, so I can act like I never read the hundreds of articles detailing everything from the phone’s shared namesake to last year’s HTC One (the new one is called the M8, technically) to the slightly larger 5-inch, 1080p display that graces the front of the M8.
I can pretend I didn’t read about the slightly more rounded and curved brush metal back more than a month ago. Or the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor coupled with 2 GB of RAM located inside, powering Android Kit Kat.
Or maybe I could dream that I didn’t read about the dual-camera system on then back of the device, allowing after-the-fact focus on the classically subpar camera found on 99 percent of all Android devices.
Perhaps I could imagine I didn’t already know all of this information before the device was announced with a release date of April 11 and a price point of either $199 or $249, depending on the carrier. But sadly, this is 2014.
And I already knew.
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That’s it for this week’s lengthy Tech with Taylor! Only a few more weeks left in the semester. So make sure to check back every Thursday for the latest and greatest in tech.
