Oculus restructures into PC and mobile divisions as Iribe steps down
Former CEO Brendan Iribe remaining with the company to lead the PC division
Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe has revealed on the company blog today that he's stepping down from the role. The news comes as Oculus has announced a restructuring of the company; it's dividing into a PC-focused VR group, which Iribe will now lead, and a mobile VR group, which Jon Thomason (previously head of software) will manage. Both will work with Mike Schroepfer, CTO of Facebook, to find a new leader for the Oculus team, Iribe noted.
"Facebook is committed to working on VR for the long term, which means building the next great computing platform that allows people to experience anything with anyone and connects the world in bold new ways," Iribe commented. "Changing the world on that scale has required us to also scale Oculus at warp speed."
Iribe continued, "As we've grown, I really missed the deep, day-to-day involvement in building a brand new product on the leading edge of technology. You do your best work when you love what you're working on. If that's not the case, you need to make a change. With this new role, I can dive back into engineering and product development. That's what gets me up every day, inspired to run to work.
"I'm thrilled to be on the front lines of creating the next leap forward in VR. We'll continue investing deeply in research and development in computer vision, displays, optics, graphics, audio, input, and more to create the breakthroughs that will unlock new form factors and experiences. We're going to move faster at solving the grand challenges of virtual reality."
Oculus recently launched its Touch controllers, which offer a better sense of hand presence in VR, along with more than 50 Touch-compatible titles. The company also launched its custom avatars, which is supported by several of the Touch launch games. Oculus has not released any official sales data, but the analysts at SuperData have forecast that the company will sell around 355,000 Rifts by the end of the year.
Correction: A representative for Oculus contacted us to note that Facebook isn't looking for a direct CEO replacement for Iribe, but simply "a new leader to manage the Oculus teams."