Mark Zuckerberg Tried Out Project Morpheus Before Buying Oculus

VRFocus - It has been revealed the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg tested Sony Computer Entertainment’s (SCE) Project Morpheus virtual reality (VR) headset for PlayStation 4 before making the decision to purchase Oculus Rift headset makers Oculus VR. PlayStation marketing executive Guy Longworth confirmed as much while speaking at the Games Marketing Summit 2014.

[DarkBlood]

He better have not thought of buying that he'd unleash too many hulks

[italiangamer]

He was so amazed by Morpheus that he had to buy Oculus to try to compete

[Gazondaily]

Pure conjecture

[escott013]

I've used the Oculus for both gaming and non-gaming. It's quite amazing on it's own.

[aliengmr]

Always with the "competition". This is NOT a competition and won't be for many years.

See Sony, for all their greatness, simply can't do VR by itself. It doesn't have the market reach or the money. Sure they could make a great little peripheral for the PS4, but that's where it stays.

What Facebook and OVR bring to the table is market reach and money that VR (not just one company) needs. Sony has breathing room now. They can develop without having to also worry about generating mass appeal. Which may still prove impossible.

OVR, Facebook, and Sony need each other if VR has any hope of succeeding. The competition thing must wait until there is a market to compete for.

[Battlefieldlover]

Competition drives innovation and pushes companies to better thier product and thier content. The compitition is a win for VR and the future of how we will view media.

[aliengmr]

@Battlefieldlover

Yea yea, heard all that before, you are forgetting one thing though, "competition" requires a "market" to compete in.

VR is hopes and dreams right now. Most seem to forget this. VR can still fail to take hold, and that has NOTHING to do with competition. If VR fails, it remains a niche peripheral. This is an expensive venture for all involved.

Sony, OVR, and Facebook both have the same goal, convince the mainstream to buy VR. Once you have a market and VR stops being viewed as a gimmick, then you can start in on the "competition" and "innovation" stuff.

This also assumes that when/if a market is established that they will even share a market at all. If they're exclusive to their respective platforms "competition" won't mean much.

[TitanUp]

still not sure about VR until i experience it myself, im a skeptic after all look how motion controls turned out. watch sonys gdc they are talking about using their VR for other things than just games.

I'm actually more interested in those things than i am the games. i like playing my games with a controller and tv ill never get used to playing any other way.

[MeteorPanda]

l tried the oculus last week...man...l was in a room looking around, it feels amazing walking with WASD and mouse then turning yuor head to the side or up.

it can work, just needs better resolution, what it has now is pretty low

[FoxTC]

I tried it at the recent Gadget Show in the UK and was really impressed with the potential. Like you say needs better res.

It's going to be amazing in a few years.

[Salooh]

I don't mind the price as long as i see huge support for it like movies and AAA games.

[maniacmayhem]

The reason I'm not fully on board with VR is the fact it completely separates you from your actual surroundings. Even when immersed in gaming I still like to know what's going on around my physical surroundings.

We are that much closer to the Matrix.

[Insomnia_84]

Sony's product made him a believer and led him to the decision of acquiring Oculus. This makes me even more anxious for Project Morpheus!!

[JasonKCK]

If that were the case then Zuckerberg could have thrown Sony some seriously needed cash, and bailed out the near bankrupt company. Zuckerberg could have probably got Morpheus for much cheaper considering Sony's financial situation. BTW Oculus was here first.

[xavierbigdaddy1972]

Wtf are you talking about. Sony is fine. Its yiur brain that is bankrupt.

[Predaking77]

Zuckerberg would have need to buy Sony as a whole in order to get Morpheus.

Is obvious Zuckerberg decision to buy Oculus was inspired by Morpheus.

Don't know why but somehow that hurts you deeply.

[JasonKCK]

I could care less and you guys should really do some research on Sony's financial problems. Climb out from under that rock. If Morpheus fails, Sony will be in much deeper than they are now. I know you guys hate hearing the truth, but there it is.

"Zuckerberg would have need to buy Sony as a whole in order to get Morpheus."

Sony can sell what ever assets they want without selling the company, any company can. This past year with Sony dropping PC, TV laying off people and selling off much of the company has proven that.

[ibrake4naps]

Vr must be awesome if he dropped a couple billion on it after trying it. I can't wait! If it's not over 3 to 4 hundred, I'll be a day 1 guy :-)

[KakashiHotake]

In my opinion I see Morpheus and Oculus as two completely different experiences now, however I like the concept of both. I like the deal with Facebook and Oculus because I travel quite a bit and spend a lot of time away from home. Facebook has in a way opened a new avenue for staying in touch that didn't used to exist. Just thinking of the ideas they have planned with VR has someone like me very excited. Then again on the Morpheus side, which is aimed more for the hardcore gamers one can only imagine the depths of immersion Sony has in store.

[dpdaredee]

Well, someone else's idea and products have always been needed by Mark to achieve success..

[Jdoki]

I wonder if Zuckerberg had the same sort of impulse purchase feeling I have when I get offered a cheese sample in the supermarket.

Me: "Wow! Cheese is awesome, I'll buy a block"

Zuckerberg: "Wow! Morpheus is awesome, I'll buy Oculus"

[ibrake4naps]

They better sale this at best buy. I had to buy my sony personal 3d viewer from the sony website. For 800!

[Bladesfist]

So he tried the rift and he tried morpheus and then he decided to buy the rift.

[Snookies12]

Well, he couldn't have bought Morpheus. It's owned by Sony.

[Bladesfist]

What? Companies buy assets all the time. Not to mention facebook has 10 times the market cap of Sony.

[joeorc]

@Bladesfist

Sony already stated the entertainment arm of the company is not for sale. Even with Dan Loeb asking for the board to offer 20% or even more for the first offer of taking playstation an other entertainment sections of Sony along with his hedge fund owning at the time 7% of Sony the board still voted with a landslide vote of no on any part of Sonys entertainment arm to go public.

You cannot look at how companies buy sale mergers an aquistions work in the market and really try to apply that / same mode of doing big business to be tried that way in the market of japan. If any 40 straight years from past market operations have shown you cannot walk in and cowboy your way through the market in japan like in the market in the west, no japanese company the size of Sony has been taken over by the west like that. Trust me on this there is plenty of hedge fund corps that over the years found this out the hard way, as a matter of fact Dan loeb's hedge fund is now no longer listed as one of the largest stock holders now. This was from under a year ago to now and his % shrank! Market cap% when talking about the japanese market is pretty much a non talking point because like I said and 40 straight years of history prove its pretty moot to try to apply that perception and leverage the market to try for hostile take overs in Japan its not going to work on a company the size of Sony because of how the market dynamics are there.

Sony is not selling its stake in VR could Sony very well do that the answer is yeah any thing can happen, but chances of it being sold off, and now that even a company like facebook drops 2 billion on another such asset means Sony must be doing somthing right!

[Snookies12]

I'm saying, I seriously doubt Sony would want to sell to them (or anyone else for that matter). At least not right now.

[Jdoki]

If Zuck wanted Morpheus it is entirely more likely that Facebook would have licensed the tech, or partnered with Sony to produce branded hardware.

Buying Oculus made infinitely more sense than trying to buy Morpheus.

[Maxor]

The Rift isn't tied to a console platform with locked hardware so it could be improved grow in capabilities over the year. Sound like a wise investment.

[MadLad]

They had the money to, one way or another, have the Morpheus if they wanted it. They went with Rift because they wanted Rift and, again, they have the money to make sure Rift is top dog and Rift certainly has the talent behind it to deliver. Even in the article, the marketing director for the Morpheus says "I wish he bought us". "Joking" or not, he knows what that level of backing means for Rift as a whole.

[Jdoki]

Oculus rift is a product produced by a company. Facebook bought the company. There's no equivalent in Sony, as the team working on Morpheus is just a division of another department - not a separate entity to sell off.

Facebook could have bought the tech from Sony, or licensed it - but they would have had to set up their own division or sub-company to continue work on the tech. In terms of buying a bunch of employees from Sony to continue working on VR, it just wouldn't happen.

[Hozi]

In a way, I am glad. Facebook with VR features surely sounds entertaining if done right. He's got to really focus on the games though.

[lemoncake]

Everybody seems to know the oculus rift name, they have good brand presence already so it was a good buy. Outside of sony fanboy circles morpheus is still a character from the matrix.

[Jdoki]

What?

Before the Facebook buyout very few people in the general public knew who or what an Oculus Rift was!

I agree few know what Project Morpheus is, but Facebook didn't buy Oculus based on brand recognition - it was for the company and the tech. And I fully expect Facebook to rebrand the Rift for mass market launch.

[hkgamer]

I'm pretty sure once Sony announced Project Morpheus, that made a bigger name then Oculus would have. Then facebook bought oculus and I guess Oculus or facebook VR is the bigger name.

@jdoki

Agreed, but I would like to say that the general public still doesn't really care about this yet until facebook would make some kind of demo to show the future of what VR can do.

VR is still way too geeky. People would not want one of those in the house. VR would be used for businesses, medical science etc...

[hkgamer]

Wait, so Mark Zuckerberg did some research on VR before buying Oculus? He didn't just click the BUY button on the oculus site?

It's obvious that he will do some kind of research on a product before he buys out a company for $2,000,000,000.

[The_Truth_24_7]

He must have really loved it but realized he couldn't buy Sony so he got had to settle on something inferior.

[hkgamer]

I wouldn't call it inferior. From what I hear, Oculus had the better product but they are closer to releasing it then sony is.

I stillm don't know what sony is planning to do with this, are they going to sell it for PS4 only or PC?

[MadLad]

Would you care to back that up with anything besides blind bias and fanboyism?

[Gr1mmyshadows]

Wow talk about being a fanboy. Someone who probably hasnt even touch neither VR headsets and is already saying that morpheus is better????

this makes me wanna facpalm you to death

[joeorc]

For those that still want to know which of the two is better well; all you have to do is consider what both interactive control system to go along with the VR technology!

That is exactly why both microsoft and sony released a motion control system. Despite many on here who claim its all about copy of what Nintendo is doing, what many fail to take into account.

All of these companies see new developments @shows well in advance of E3 and the big gaming shows is pretty much the show case not to show up coming trends in computer entertainment development.

Most of that is computer science events. Which is why most of the time many times they find out they see that they are working on the same type of things.

You think all of this hype about this type of technology was just over night? They know the direction pretty much years in advance.

Example: you can gain impute through the sense of sight in VR but in order to interact with such environment's you need more than just a 2D plane of vector. Depth of field, area awareness and the ability to track your movements inside such an environment on or near 1:1 require things like Move, kinect or Wii motion+ do many on here think in the time for R&D that VR was not included in design of such motion control systems?

Motion control was the lynchpin for the interactive control mechanic for VR, but imagine the . Price 7 years ago than tack on the price of VR?

Its all about costs to reduction to release to = low cost enough for the consumer to be able to buy in remember Kinect was for the xbox360 like $150.00 imagine if Microsoft released kinect in 2005? Yes microsoft could have released kinect in 2005 but the costs were way higher.

But now look at kinect + Vr or Move + Vr or WiiMotion+ Vr.

Its about combining the technology as a eco system not just by itself.

[Jdoki]

@The Truth... Your username is a real misnomer!

Everything I've read about Oculus and Morpheus points to both having strengths and weaknesses compared to the other... And as both are still prototypes it's impossible to say how they will compare in the final release.

[SPARTAN3]

Then he remembered that John Carmack works for Oculus.

[Yaay4me]

New IP's are the best.

[feraldrgn]

He probably saw the potential & wanted to get into the market.

[finito82]

oculus is going to be crazy

[Yaay4me]

makes sense, he must have wanted to acquire how the oculus stacks up against competition (for lack of a better word). I know I would want to know something like that before I dish out $2 BILLION dollars. lol