Star Citizen's Chris Roberts doesn't think Oculus "sold out"

Cloud Imperium founder and creator of the upcoming Star Citizen Chris Roberts doesn't think Oculus VR betrayed gamers by “selling out” to Facebook.

Chris Roberts doesn't think Oculus VR betrayed gamers by “selling out” to Facebook. In a post to Star Citizen's official website, he makes an argument that's familiarat this point: Oculus VR needed a lot more money in order for the Rift to succeed.

“It really needed a lot more funding than it has raised from its past two VC rounds,” he said. “Hardware is expensive: it's one thing to perfect the technology, but before you can sell a single Rift, you need to spend hundreds of millions on manufacturing and building a supply chain if you intend to make the Rift (and Virtual Reality) relevant for the mass market.”

For example, he says that Microsoft invested well over a billion dollars just to launch Xbox One this fall, and hopes that Facebook's funding will allow Oculus to compete on a similar, mass-market scale.

While he isn't opposed to the acquisition, Roberts said that his own company has no interest in following a similar path. “We don't need to go to anyone with deep pockets to make OUR dream a reality,” he said, explaining that their development costs are not nearly as high as Oculus VR's.

Those development costs, as you may have heard, are funded by fans, who so far have raised a staggering $41 million.