Facebook has over a billion users. Even babies, unable to communicate with the world besides leaking, have Facebook pages. So it’s probably with good reason that Mark Zuckerberg thinks in big numbers, numbers like 50-100 million. That’s the number of Oculus Rift units that will need to be sold for the device to be a “meaningful” platform, which the Facebook head honcho dropped in an earnings call.
Not quite a billion then, but gosh that’s still a very large number.
Zuckerberg considers the acquisition of Oculus a long-term bet on the future of computing.
“Every 10 to 15 years, a new major computing platform arrives and we think that virtual and augmented reality are important parts of this upcoming next platform. This quarter, Oculus continued to make progress towards this vision.”
“[I]t needs to rich a very large sale,” Zuckerberg explained, later in the call. “50 million to 100 million units before it will really be a very meaningful thing as a computing platform. So I do think it’s going to take a bunch of years to get there.”
He expects it to take a “few cycles of the device” before it reaches that point.
“And then when you get to that scale, that’s when it starts to be interesting as a business in terms of developing out the ecosystem. So when I’m talking about that as a 10 year thing, its building the first set of devices and building the audience and the ecosystem around that until it eventually becomes a business.”
A consumer beta for the Oculus Rift could arrive as soon as April next year.
Cheers, Gamasutra.