Oculus Closes VR Movie Studio: Story Studio

[Steven Bogos]

Oculus Closes VR Movie Studio: Story Studio

Story Studio, which produced the Emmy-award winning VR short Henry, has been shuttered by Oculus.

Oculus, the creator of popular VR headset the Oculus Rift, has announced the closure of one of its studios today. The studio in question is Story Studio, a division of the company that focuses on VR movies, rather than games. It produced the Emmy-award winning VR short Henry.

"We've decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production," said Oculus executive Jason Rubin in a blog post [https://www.oculus.com/blog/the-next-chapter-of-creative-development-in-vr/]. "As part of that shift, we'll be winding down Story Studio."

"Now that a large community of filmmakers and developers are committed to the narrative VR art form, we're going to focus on funding and supporting their content. This helps us turn our internal research, development, and attention towards exciting but unsolved problems in AR and VR hardware and software."

Despite the closure, Rubin has assured fans that Oculus remains committed to growing the VR film and creative content ecosystem.

Source: Oculus [https://www.oculus.com/blog/the-next-chapter-of-creative-development-in-vr/]

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[DarklordKyo]

Y'know, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm kinda starting to feel sorry for the people at Occulus. They had big ambitions to become the next great innovators in modern technology, and, a number of controversial events later, they're considered the VR laughingstock.

Yeah, a number of them were the company bringing it upon themselves, but their ambitions were in the right place all things considered.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

had big ambitions to become the next great innovators in modern technology, and, a number of controversial events later

Like VR sucking, and not being the cash-cow everyone was hoping it would be?

 

[Myria]

Oculus, the creator of popular VR headset the Oculus Rift,

The applicability, or lack thereof, of the term 'popular' and the closing of this studio might, just might, be related...

 

[Laughing Man]

Y'know, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm kinda starting to feel sorry for the people at Occulus.

You feel sorry for the folks that had great ambition and the desire to do the right thing right up until Facebook turned up flashed it's massive gold arse at them and they just dropped everything and shacked up in an instant with her? Yeah I really do feel sorry for them, they managed to get Facebook to spend a fortune on buying a tech that anyone with half a brain could have told you was utter arse gravy 10 years before Occulus even turned up on the scene.

As for the story let me translate, the studio wasn't profitable so we pulled the plug.

 

[bladestorm91]

This thread is quite cynical. I'm more optimistic about VR despite the massive shitstorms Oculus caused, in the first place VR movies are just weird and I'm not surprised they are shutting this studio down.

1st gen is too expensive and resolution is shit, 2nd gen hopefully resolves these issues. Concerning content, the quality is slowly going up as devs tinker with VR designing, that said I think the ports of Serious Sam to VR are the best VR games right now ironically enough.

VR headsets have to stay and become common place if you want the VR you see in fiction to come into fruition. The biggest problem going on in the VR industry right now is that VR input devices like Touch and the Vive controllers are honestly shitty ways to do stuff in VR. The VR we want requires full-body movement tracking, not treadmill shit, you can search for AxonVR to see what I mean. Once the latter because cheap and comes into the consumer market is when actual VR (non-invasive VR) will come into existence.