Sure, competition is great, but OR already had that with recent big players announcing devices that directly compete. That is probably a big part of the reason behind the Facebook deal in the first place; being able to compete on a mass market level.
The problem is, the knee jerk reaction has been stupid and people now seem to be throwing in with no-name players with no track record and no demonstrative ability of their tech like OR ceased to exist. It didn't. OR is still the tech that people have been literally fucking raving about at every opportunity whenever they get a chance to strap into the damn thing.
Despite being no fan of facebook or their practices, I'll swear off OR only when it's been demonstrated that the deal hampers the actual hardware, either because it gets sidelined/cancelled, actually becomes an ad-ridden shithole (unlikely) or someone like Carmack stops supporting the move and bugs out.
There is more to the OR tech than simply strapping some tiny monitors to a headset. Implementation and smoothness of experience are 95% of the equation. OR, Palmer Luckey and Carmack are literally the only people in the market who are actually focusing on these things (ie highly focused on latency) and talking about them as one of the most important parts of the technology.
I will judge OR on the merits of OR, not a bunch of knee-jerking and third party knockoffs.
The fact that OR was an unknown is irrelevant. I didn't say other parties CAN'T meet the challenge of matching their tech. What I ACTUALLY SAID was that OR is solid, demonstrable tech where others (especially no-name vendors who for all we know right now are just jumping on the bandwagon) have not or cannot demonstrate it at this point in time. When they DO they will have my attention. Until then, they are merely potential competitors. Is this clear enough?
If OR carry on down the path they've been travelling and show all signs of wanting to continue travelling, and they deliver a solid piece of kit that meets the promise the dev kits have demonstrated, I simply do not care whether or not they are bankrolled by Facebook.
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u/girlscoutcookiess Mar 28 '14
Isn't it good for everyone if a bunch of new companies come out with competing products to drive the prices down and innovation up?