Oculus co-founder and Rift lead leaves Facebook

Oculus began as a small startup led by Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe. The duo found great success on Kickstarter and successfully pushed the industry towards VR quicker than anticipated. This all ended in a huge buyout from Facebook and since then, Oculus has gone through many changes. Palmer Luckey no longer works there, Brendan iribe stepped down as CEO and the Rift appears to have taken a back seat in favour of ‘standalone' VR headsets. Now, Iribe is moving on and leaving Oculus behind.

Oculus co-founder and former CEO, Brendan Iribe, announced last night that he would be leaving Facebook. At first, reports indicated that another internal shake-up and the cancellation of the ‘Rift 2' were to blame for Iribe's departure. However, according to Nate Mitchell, the current head of Rift, new PC hardware is still being developed.

A lot of questions today about the future of Rift — we're still driving forward on the Rift/PC platform with new hardware, software, and content.

Lots of great stuff in the works. More to share in the months ahead.

— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) October 22, 2018

Facebook's main focus has clearly shifted over the last couple of years, as Oculus continues to push standalone headsets like the Oculus Go and upcoming Oculus Quest. However, it seems that there will eventually be new Rift hardware too, so hopefully we'll begin to hear more about that after Oculus Quest launches in 2019.

With Brendan Iribe and Palmer Luckey now gone, questions turned to John Carmack and his future at Oculus. Carmack has primarily been working on standalone and mobile VR headsets and will continue to do so even after the launch of Oculus Quest.

KitGuru Says: Oculus is a very different company now than it was two years ago. Still, it is nice to hear that another Rift is still on the cards, after all, it is the product that gave Oculus its start to begin with. 

Become a Patron!