Oculus raises $75M to introduce virtual reality headset into mainstream marketplac

According to a report from Financial Review, the name of the new company is Oculus VR and it has just recently raised some $75 million to bring its product, a virtual reality headset, into the mainstream marketplace. The California-based start-up received a hefty sum of funds from a Silicon Valley venture capital firm called Andreessen Horowitz. One of the leading investors from the firm, Mark Andreessen, has taken interest in Oculus,pendant lamp and appears ready to help the company break into the video game industry.However, even with an investor’s advice and money at their backs, Oculus won’t have an easy time of making a dent in the video game world. The industry has proven to have a plethora of roadblocks to entry over the years, and has remained concentrated among the primary players – the aforementioned Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft – for the better part of a decade and a half now. And while mobile devices have opened up the industry a bit for aspiring game developers, a flagship company with a competitive console has not emerged since Microsoft released the original Xbox in 2001.

So what does this all mean for Oculus and Andreessen? It means there is a long road ahead. Oculus already has one defined gaming experience (called Oculus Rift), as well as plans to move its virtual reality offerings into “film, education, architecture, and design.” Still, the most ambitious goal Oculus is currently carrying is “to alter the gaming landscape,” and while virtual reality certainly has the potential to change the way people play video games, it will take the right push to make the Oculus device work in the mainstream marketplace.Certainly, game developers are interested in designing gameplay for virtual reality models. The standard “console + controller + TV set” model of gaming has existed for so long that it’s almost difficult to think of a device that is pp resinessentially the console, the controller, and the TV set all in one. The Oculus is that device, a headset which allows users to gaze into what is essentially a different virtual world. The device isn’t sleek – it was initially built using Kickstarter funds, most of which came from intrigued game developers – but with the right marketing push, the right games, and a reasonable price, it could become part of a “must-try” gaming experience.However, Oculus will have to use caution as it proceeds with its new funding: the gaming industry is littered with the corpses of virtual reality failures.Vintage faucets Perhaps the most notable of those cautionary tales is Nintendo’s Virtual Boy console, which the gaming company released in 1995 and discontinued less than a year later.