Facebook's Oculus Buys Beat Saber Development

Facebook's Oculus Buys Beat Saber Development

On 26th November 2019, the Facebook-owned Oculus said that it is buying the Development Studio which launched the popular “Virtual Reality” game- Beat Saber. This is done to expand the VR technology to wider audiences.   Oculus, a manufacturer of Rift and Quest VR headgear, did not disclose the financial terms of the Beat Games acquisition in Prague.   Mike Verdu, Oculus director of augmented and virtual reality content said in a blog post: "Beat Games is joining us in our quest to bring VR to more people around the world".    He further added, "Beat Games' accomplishments are already impressive, but Facebook and the Beat Games team know that there is so much more that can be done across VR, games, and music."   While assuring the players, Verdu said: “The studio would continue to ship content and updates for Beat Saber on platforms where it is already available”.   In a virtual game, players use lightsabers to hit the coming large cubes to the beat of the music, sometimes twisting or duplicating to avoid facing walls.    Verdu said, "VR reimagines old genres and invents new ones".   Oculus is exploring ways to accelerate the deployment of virtual reality technology, including acquisitions announced by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, as the next big computing platform.   Verdu said, "With the resources and know-how that we can offer, Beat Games will be able to accelerate, adding more music and more exciting features to 'Beat Saber' as well as bringing the game to more people".   Facebook is designing a virtual social community where users of their Oculus headgear will be able to "explore new places" through the virtual world of Horizon ー set for beta launch in the year 2020.   Earlier this year Facebook said: “Oculus users will be able to choose an avatar and interact with others in the virtual community”.   Horizon will replace the previous versions of the social VR community Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms.   Oculus is still a small part of Facebook, whose main social network and other platforms reach more than two billion people across the world.   A wireless VR headset disclosed in 2018 that “Analysts expect sales of 1.3 million units in 2019 of the Oculus Quest”.