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| Quint big questions roughly Oculus' CEO shakeup |
Yesterday,
virtual reality company Oculus announced that its
CEO Brendan Iribe — part of the founding team and one of VR’s most prominent
evangelists — is stepping down. Iribe isn’t leaving the company altogether, and
he framed the decision as basically wanting to get his hands dirty by working
in a newly formed PC VR division. Meanwhile, Oculus is turning a corner after
shipping the final piece of its Rift platform, the product it was originally
founded around. Along with Iribe’s new team, it’s founding a group to handle
mobile VR, which has more mass-market potential than the Rift.
But
beyond that simple narrative, the news is tough to interpret. Is Locus
expanding, or just moving people around? Is its parent company Facebook, which
is currently helping replace Tribe, swooping in to take a bigger role? Where is
Rift inventor Palmer Lucky, who has been incommunicado since his
political controversy this fall? Here’s what we know about the change, and the
questions we have left.
What’s
actually changing at Locus?
On
its face, this sounds like a big reorganization. Locus is splitting into two
divisions: a PC side managed by Tribe, and a mobile side managed by former head
of software Jon Thomasin. Here’s how Tribe describes the PC side:
Facebook
is committed to working on VR for the long term, which means building the next
great computing platform that allows people to experience anything with anyone
and connects the world in bold new ways.
Changing
the world on that scale has required us to also scale Oculus at warp speed.
With our growth and product strategy, we’ve decided to establish new PC and
mobile VR groups to be more focused, strengthen development and accelerate our
roadmap.
Symbolically,
that’s a big deal for Oculus. The Rift has always been its core product, but
its midrange Gear VR headset — which is powered by a Samsung phone — is much
cheaper and sells better. Now, it’s emphasizing that it won’t be giving up
either one: mobile VR will get the honor of a full division in the company,
while desktop VR will keep pushing the cutting edge.
Practically,
though, Locus’ big players seem to be doing the same thing as before. CTO John Cormack was a key part of the Gear VR team, and he’s still focusing on mobile.
Michael Brash, the far-thinking industry veteran known for his long speeches
on creating the Matrix, is still leading research
under Tribe. VP of product Nate Mitchell, who showed up at The Verge’s
CES trailer with a taped-up prototype headset in 2013, is still working on the
Rift. Despite the talk of scaling, we don’t know how much (if any) Locus is
growing.
And
if you think a whole lot of things are getting grouped under “PC VR” — well,
you’re right, and that’s our next question.
What
does the PC virtual reality division really do?
Iribe’s
group handles “pushing the state of VR forward with Rift, research, and
computer vision.” Effectively, “PC VR” seems to be a shorthand for any
cutting-edge tech, much of which will probably be very different from today’s
tethered VR. Computer vision, for instance, is a major factor in building
self-contained headsets like the Santa Cruz prototype, an Oculus research project
announced earlier this year. Santa Cruz, though, arguably has more in common
with mobile headsets than the Oculus Rift, even if it’s not using a smartphone.
If
PC VR is Oculus’ research and high-end VR wing, then mobile VR could well be
its mass-market consumer division. We already know it covers the Samsung Gear
VR, currently Oculus’ only mobile VR headset. But in the long term, projects
like Santa Cruz could get moved over when they’re out of the R&D phase.
Who
will be Locus’ new leader, and why won’t they be a CEO?
The
biggest takeaway from this reorganization isn’t the roles that existing
executives will be filling, but the fact that someone new will be calling the
shots at Oculus — and that they won’t be doing it with a title like CEO.
Instead, we’ll see “a new leader for the Oculus team,” who will presumably
answer to Facebook.
Locus might be getting closer to
Facebook
So
far, Oculus has publicly operated as a separate entity from Facebook, with its
own corporate structure. Now, it looks more like a subdivision of its parent
company, and it’s not clear whether Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer will bring in
another leader who will act as a figurehead the way Iribe did.
Why
would he choose not to? One possible answer: because Mark Zuckerberg himself
wants to start taking a more active role in the VR industry. Oculus has
repeatedly described itself as a gaming-first company, but if Facebook is
serious about virtual reality, then it will have to start moving out of that
world.
What’s
the scope of Locus now?
Besides
its hardware and research groups, Locus has two content divisions: Locus
Studios, which helps fund VR games like Chronic and Super hot, and Locus Story Studio, which makes interactive films like the Emmy-winning Henry
or upcoming Dear Angelica. Neither one is directly tied to mobile or
desktop platforms, and we don’t know exactly how they fit into this new
organizational structure.
If
Oculus gets closer to Facebook, that also recasts its relationship with
Facebook’s independent VR social team, currently led by game developer Mike
Booth. We doubt they’d merge completely, but the lines could keep blurring —
and Zuckerberg or other Facebook figures could become more closely involved in
both.
Where
is Palmer Lucky?
Shortly
before Oculus’ annual developer conference in October, Palmer Luckey became persona non grata for
funding a pro-Trump “shitposting” group. But although he’s been almost entirely
invisible since then, Oculus has consistently confirmed that Luckey is still
working at the company, and a spokesperson now says he’ll be moving to a new
role.
VP of sitting quietly in the corner,
reading ‘Ready Player One’
Luckey’s
position at the company has always been vague, so his new job title could well
be “VP of sitting quietly in the corner, reading Ready Player One.” That
said, it would be a waste of his enthusiasm and expertise. If Iribe is moving
to the PC team in part because it will let him focus on development, it’s
plausible that Luckey will also be taking a more concrete tinkering role behind
the scenes.
Of
course, Trump’s win puts Lucky in a stronger position, and also puts him in
the company of another big Silicon Valley figure: Peter Thieu, a Facebook board
member and advisor for Trump’s transition team. Although Thieu hasn’t expressed
much interest in virtual reality, he’s notoriously fond of dystonia tech
moonshots. So while I’m not going to come right out and say that the
next-generation Oculus Rift will be a pacification device for Peter Thieves plebeian blood-thralls on a homesteading version of Gallants Gulch... well, I’m not ruling it out,
either.