Oculus VR, developer of the Rift virtual reality headset for PC, has announced today that it will acquire product engineering company, Carbon Design Group. The group has designed numerous products, including the Xbox 360 controller, racing wheel, and Kinect.
This is not the beginning of a partnership between the two companies, though. According to the announcement on the Oculus VR website, they have been collaborating for more than a year on “multiple unannounced projects.”
Peter Bristol, Carbon’s creative director, explained that the group is excited to be a part of Oculus because the world of VR is relatively unexplored and open to innovation. “From a design and engineering perspective,” he said, “building the products that finally deliver consumer virtual reality is one of the most interesting and challenging problem sets ever. This is an entirely open product category. With consumer VR at its inception, the physical architectures are still unknown. We’re on the cutting edge of defining how virtual reality looks, feels, and functions.”
The VR developer has seen a lot of growth and movement in the past year. In March, Oculus VR was purchased by Facebook for $2 billion, and numerous designers from game developers, most notably id Software’s John Carmack, have joined the company.
The specifics of this new acquisition are not know at this time. I think there’s a good chance that Oculus is developing its own controller interface for the Rift, but that’s purely speculation. What do you think Oculus is working on? Let us know in the comments!
Keep an eye on GameSpot for future news on Oculus’s “unannounced projects.”
Alex Newhouse is an editorial intern at GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @alexbnewhouse |
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