Following the cancellation of Oculus Story Studio's project titled The Wolves in the Walls, Facebook has decided to halt Oculus Story Studio's content production in relation to producing gaming content. To make things clear, the entire company is not being shut down. Instead, the company aims to redirect its focus to more so invest exclusively in non-gaming or film related interactive content.
According to TechCrunch, Facebook had invested around $250 million for Story Studio to produce original VR content and will proceed to invest another quarter billion to further create more original content for VR users sink their teeth into. In addition to that, a report also mentioned that in the announcement made by Jason Rubin, the Oculus VP of Content, he stated that after great consideration they have decided to shift their focus from internal content creation but rather to more external productions and thereby effectively shutting down Story Studio.
Oculus is a technology company that specializes in virtual reality hardware and software products that have its own unit-Story Studio to create and design visual cinematic productions for the virtual reality company. Story Studio had won an Emmy Award in the division for the original interactive program for its VR short "Henry." As reported by CNBC, Facebook had bought Oculus for no less than $3 billion and had decided to absorb its employees back in 2014. With Facebook offering a 360-degree panoramic view feature for its users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes that further investments in the VR industry will be incredibly beneficial and will ultimately become well integrated into the daily life of people.
Oculus, however, is not the only player in the industry that offers virtual reality products. Some of its competitors include HTC Corp's unit called Vive and not to mention Sony for its exclusive virtual reality hardware for the PlayStation. Oculus is not the only one that had undergone changes in terms of management. Facebook had been continuing the movement to exercise more control over Oculus. However, Facebook's VR plans have been threatened when a lawsuit was filed against them by the video game publisher ZeniMax Media Inc. for in infringing ZeniMax' copyrighted software code. Eventually, the ruling was held in favor of ZeniMax and was awarded $500 million in a settlement.
