Brendan Iribe, long-running former-CEO of Oculus VR and original co-founder with Palmer Luckey, has left the company. Describing the move as the first break he's had in 20 years, the VR pioneer's leaving comes amidst rumors of a shakeup at Facebook and Oculus, with some suggesting that the second-generation Rift VR headset for PCs has been canceled as well.
Brendan Iribe came on board with Oculus VR when it was first founded, along with Palmer Luckey, Michael Antonov, Nate Mitchell in July 2012 in Irvine, California. Together they launched the first Rift Kickstarter campaign, bringing in $2.4 million and developing the original DK1 and DK2 developer kit headsets.
Iribe was not only instrumental in developing the business arm of Oculus, but he was a perfect guinea pig for some of the comfort improvements Oculus made to the VR experience over the years. He was notoriously sensitive to motion sickness, so when Oculus switched to a 90Hz display, added positional tracking, and motion controllers it was a huge moment, because Iribe could suddenly comfortably spend an hour or more in VR without wanting to vomit.
Now though he's moving on to greener pastures and there have been rumors that Oculus has canceled its planned Rift 2 headset swirling around the news. Supposedly this is to take the company in a more mobile-orientated direction with hardware like the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest. Oculus, however, has denied such rumors.
A lot of questions today about the future of Rift — we're still driving forward on the Rift/PC platform with new hardware, software, and content.
Lots of great stuff in the works. More to share in the months ahead.— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) October 22, 2018
Image source: EvrydayVR/Flickr