Oculus VR raises $16m in series A funding
Oculus Rift firm almost triples its initial funding target
The company behind the highly anticipated Oculus Rift has raised $16 million in its first round of funding.
According to a report from Panodaily - later confirmed by AllThingsD - the series A round was led by Spark Capital and Matrix Partners. Oculus VR entered the round with a funding target of $5.5 million, but it was so over-subscribed that it ended with almost triple that amount.
The hype around the Oculus Rift has been steadily building ever since its public debut at E3 2012. Oculus VR still hasn't set a launch date for the consumer product, but the Kickstarter-funded dev kits started shipping at the end of March.
Digital Foundry assessed a dev kit for GamesIndustry International at the end of April, calling it a, "landmark achievement...that represents a new way to play games." However, the early version of the Oculus Rift wasn't without problems.
"Oculus Rift offers the potential for complete gaming immersion, but what it doesn't offer is any way to better interact with the world it so vividly brings to life... You want to reach out and touch things, and interact in a more intuitive manner - but you can't.
"For all its drawbacks, the Rift makes a powerful statement about the future of virtual reality, but even with the dev kit's major issues addressed, we're still a long, long way off from an experience that lives up to the raw potential."