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Facebook won’t rebrand the Oculus Rift, say the social giant

The Facebook logo. Not getting anywhere near the Rift, apparently.

Facebook have officially responded to a report that the social network planned to take advantage of its upcoming $2 billion acquisition of Oculus to rebrand the Rift. A Facebook spokesperson said that its logo and bright-blue interface would not replace Oculus’ own branding – and that the suggestion was a poor reflection of the relationship between the two companies.

The Facebook rep told Techcrunch that the rumour was “not true and not in the spirit of our relationship [with Oculus]”.

A New York Times source had claimed that future Oculus hardware – likely including the commercial version of the Rift – would be remade in Facebook’s image.

“According to a person involved in the deal who was not allowed to speak publicly because he was not authorized by either company,” wrote NYT’s Nick Wingfield and Vindu Goel, “Facebook eventually plans to redesign the Oculus hardware and rebrand it with a Facebook interface and logo.”

It’s worth noting that the Rift doesn’t have an interface per se at this stage – instead bowing to the UIs and menus of whatever game you might be playing in conjunction with it.

But when Oculus announced the Rift dev kit 2, VP of product Nate Mitchell suggested that a content discovery interface was one of the key features the VR goggles would need before a commercial release.

“A lot of it is on software experience side: when you take it home, it should just work,” he said. “How do you discover content? What’s the first experience you’re going to play? Where is the content?

“For the consumer version, it should be easy. Anyone should be able to grab a Rift, plug it in, and have fun. We’re not there yet.”

Would you mind, especially, if there were to be a Facebook logo somewhere on your consumer Rift? Maybe just a little one, over your left eyelid?

Cheers, CVG.