Oculus Acquires 360 Controller Design Company
Oculus, the company behind the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, have today updated their official Kickstarter page with news that the company have acquired Carbon Design Group – the award winning company who worked in partnership with Microsoft to help develop the controller for the Xbox 360.
The post from Oculus states the following;
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire the Carbon Design team, one of the premier industrial design and product engineering teams in the country, with over 50 awards to their name. As part of the deal, the team will officially become a key component of the product engineering group at Oculus, operating from the Carbon studio in the Seattle area. They’ll also be working closely with the Oculus R&D team based out of Redmond. We expect the deal to close by the end of summer.
The official update, posted on Kickstarter for both their backers and the public to see, also states that Oculus and Carbon Design have “been working with Carbon for nearly a year on multiple unannounced projects.” It’s unclear what these projects may involve and whether Carbon Design have been involved from a consultative background only or directly involved in the production and design of a product and/or device.
Oculus, who were similarly taken over by Facebook in what was a gigantic deal earlier in the year, are making some interesting acquisitions and moves without obvious motivations. The official website for Carbon Design shows that they also worked with Microsoft for the original Xbox 360 Kinect, as well as projects from other industries entirely.
It’s interesting to consider whether Oculus are looking to release a controller alongside the Rift itself? Whilst it could alienate console manufacturers, bundling the headset and an official controller for PC use sounds like a very good move in order to continue gaining momentum and increase uptake of the Rift prior to public release.
We’ll have more on this if and when we find out more – it could be a while before Oculus brings any of the unannounced projects forward, but for now you can discuss this in our community.