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Zuckerberg: Microsoft and Sony are no match for Facebook and Oculus

Mark Zuckerberg.  (Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr.)  —  The jaw-dropper of the day in the tech industry, you've probably heard, was Facebook's announcement that it will spend $2 billion to acquire Oculus, the maker of the virtual-reality headset Oculus Rift.

GeekWire Todd Bishop

Context & Ripple Effects

Facebook’s planned $2 billion purchase of Oculus VR followed Zuckerberg’s acknowledgement that the company had been slow to embrace mobile. The deal places Oculus in Facebook’s search for the next major computing platform, while Facebook says Oculus will operate independently, beginning with gaming and later pursuing communication uses.

First-order effects

  • Oculus is positioned inside Facebook as a separate unit, pairing its virtual-reality headset work with Facebook’s stated ambition to build a new communication platform.
  • Zuckerberg has publicly cast Microsoft and Sony as the relevant competitive set, raising the strategic stakes of Oculus beyond a gaming-device launch.

Second-order effects

  • Microsoft and Sony face a competitor framing in which virtual reality is tied to a large social platform rather than only to game hardware and software.
  • Developers deciding where to support VR must weigh Oculus’s gaming focus against Facebook’s stated longer-term communication ambitions.

Third-order effects

  • The acquisition is one data point in big technology companies’ effort to secure control points for the computing platform expected to follow mobile, through ownership of both hardware and user networks.

The trend: Large technology platforms are using acquisitions to position virtual reality as a potential post-mobile computing and communication layer.

Related: Facebook to acquire Oculus VR for approximately $2 billion · Facebook · Oculus · Microsoft · Sony

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