In a call with investors following its surprise $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR on Tuesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the virtual reality company’s focus will still be on games, for now. “I do think gaming is a start,” Zuckerberg said. “Once you get a network effect around gaming, you start to get communication cases. … People will build a model of a place far away and you can go see it. It’s like teleporting.” For most of its life, Oculus execs have maintained a hard line about the identity of the company’s virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift: Gaming, gaming, gaming. It’s only in recent months that the message has broadened a bit to include things more in line with Facebook’s product, such as a hypothetical social communication app Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe described to me last year. “Kids will one day look back and laugh at FaceTime,” Iribe said in the interview.
