VR enthusiasts rejoice: Oculus has secured $16 million in investor funding to release its Rift virtual reality headset to the mass market. The company has previously indicated that the Rift headset was envisioned as a consumer product and Oculus is now poised to make good on that promise.
The company started off as a Kickstarter campaign last year with a $250,000 goal and wound up raising nearly $2.5 million dollars. So far, only the company's backers have had access to the Rift headset, as well as developers with $300 to spare for the dev kit model.
"Oculus began with a single mission: to put players inside the game," said Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and inventor of the Oculus Rift. "This investment allows us to deliver immersive and affordable virtual reality to players everywhere."
A few games already work with the headset and developers are busy working on porting additional content for the VR headset, as well as creating new titles built specifically with the Oculus Rift in mind.
Santo Politi, founder of one of the firms that co-led the latest funding round said the appeal of Oculus is its potential to differentiate itself in a very radical way in the increasingly crowded gaming and mobile markets.
"In our estimation, Oculus is one of the only companies in the space with something completely new and disruptive. They have the right team, capital and vision to take virtual reality beyond console gaming and into everyday computing."
Oculus has already created an HD version of its virtual reality headset, which debuted at E3 last week. Maybe with $16 million in new funding, the company will show up with a Holodeck next year.
"In this business, there are only a few rare companies that can so perfectly embody the future you read about in science fiction novels," said Antonio Rodriguez of Matrix Partners, one of Oculus' new backers. "What Palmer, Brendan and the team are building at Oculus so closely matches the Metaverse, we had to be part of it. Working with them to get this platform to market at scale will be enormously exciting."
