Facebook Buys Oculus VR for 2 Billion Dollars

Palmer Luckey has officially just lived up to his namesake, earlier today the 21 year old college dropout just sold Oculus VR to Facebook for $2 billion. The Oculus Rift is without a doubt a hot piece of hardware... attracting top talent from ID Software and Valve. I guess it was only a matter of time before it caught the attention of the most famous 20-something college dropout. 

Oculus will retain their Irvine, California headquarters and the transaction will not be officially closed until the second quarter of 2014 (I guess Zuckerberg needs to shake some loose change out of his couch cushions first). The Facebook founder had this to say via a post on his Facebook-

"The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there's a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We're going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this. But this is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home."

So it is a bit reassuring that the Oculus team isn't going to be thrusted into making some Farmville VR app right away...but I imagine a doctors visit actually requires your body to be there for the doctor to examine. Unless... Facebook has secret Holodeck technology?! 

The announcement comes less than a week after Sony unveiled Project Morpheus, so I'm sure that isn't a coincidence. Sony is a heavy hitter in the home electronics department, so it makes natural sense for Oculus to need a tech giant like Facebook to be able to compete. I'm not exactly sold on the "social aspects" of VR however... isn't putting on goggles and headphones to escape reality the exact opposite of being social? 

Still... selling your company for $2 billion before your first commercial product is even released? I think I need to reconsider what I name my first kid.

You can listen to Facebook's investor conference call from this afternoon here(listen for all the faint cash register sounds in the background).