Along with developing its own games like Luckey's Tale, Oculus VR has also released a few short films over the past couple of years to help promote its Oculus Rift headset and VR in general. They include heartwarming tales like Henry, Lost and Dear Angelica, the former of which won an Emmy for the company.
However, that seems not to be something Oculus looks to do under its Facebook parent company no longer. Following the departure of several high-tier management figures like Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe stepping down as CEO, Oculus has announced that it's "winding down" its Story Studio, which likely means no more 360 degree short films from Oculus.
"We’re now entering the next chapter of VR development, where new creators enter the market in anticipation of adoption and growth, and we’ve been looking at the best way to allocate our resources to create an impact on the ecosystem," said Oculus' Jason Rubin, who originally directed all of the Crash Bandicoot games.
"After careful consideration, we’ve decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production."
While it looks like Oculus will continue to fund third party developers who are making this sort of non-interactive content, it won't be doing the same internally.
It seems clearer than ever that in terms of its first party aims, Oculus' big focus is on social interaction through platforms like Facebook. Perhaps the naysayers after the original Facebook buyout were right.
