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Oculus VR acquires Xbox 360 joypad designers, Carbon Design

by Mark Tyson on 25 June 2014, 11:45

Tags: Facebook

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Facebook's Oculus VR has just announced its latest move in progressing its Oculus Rift VR headset to a polished final consumer product. It has acquired hardware designer Carbon Design, the group behind the Microsoft Xbox 360 controller design.

The Seattle-based industrial design and product engineering team has also designed several other major products ranging from the original Kinect and industrial building tools to surgical instruments, and has won over 50 awards for its work. We also learned that the Carbon Design team has been working for Oculus VR already, for nearly a year, on "multiple unannounced projects," according to Oculus' blog.

The deal will see Carbon Design's 40 member team join the product engineering group at Oculus, whilst continuing work out of its Seattle offices. The industrial designers will be working closely with the Oculus R&D team based just out of Redmond. The deal is expected to close by the end of summer, however no financial terms have been disclosed at this stage.

"A few seconds with the latest Oculus prototypes and you know that virtual reality is for real this time. From a design and engineering perspective, building the products that finally deliver consumer virtual reality is one of the most interesting and challenging problem sets ever," Carbon Design's Creative Director Peter Bristol wrote.

He continued to highlight that the physical architectures of consumer VR are still unknown at this stage, and the partnership is on the edge of defining how it looks. Bristol added that Carbon Design is "incredibly excited to be part of the team" and is "looking forward to helping design the future."

Carbon Design product showcase

After being acquired by Facebook, the cash-rich Oculus is now working on getting the design of the final consumer Oculus Rift product right, as design will certainly play an important part on convincing users to welcome the VR age. The company announced earlier this month that the price of the Oculus Rift VR headset will be set at "the lowest cost possible," with the first consumer version of the Rift already in the works.



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Facebook's Oculus VR has just announced its latest move in progressing its Oculus Rift VR headset to a polished final consumer product. It has acquired hardware designer Carbon Design, the group behind the Microsoft Xbox 360 controller design.
Damn. :(

I don't know whether the 360's controller is a “classic design”, but I find it really comfortable. I bought a (second hand) PS3 controller for my Android tablet (for Dead Trigger) and I honestly wanted to throw it out of the window after 15 minutes use.
I am sure I've mentioned this before, but I have both the 360 and the PS3 controller, and it's the PS3 that I use most of the time on my PC. I think a major reason is that I primarily use a controller for the d-pad, and find that aspect much better on the PS3 controller.
Having both 360 and PS3 controllers, I find the 360 one much better, my hands ache a lot less with it compared to the PS3 controller.
kellyharding
Having both 360 and PS3 controllers, I find the 360 one much better, my hands ache a lot less with it compared to the PS3 controller.

Same here, the DS3 is basically the same as the original PS controller from 1994.

Yes the d pad is better but the rest is just shocking and causes aches and pains after short use, I have been ruined y the 360 controller, what an odd idea designing it to fit nicely in your hands.
*Shrug*. I can use it hours at a time without any pain. Perhaps hand size comes into play. In fairness the 360 controller do not cause any pain either, but it feels a bit bigger than I'd ideally like. For me it goes like this:

D-pad -> PS3
Triggers -> 360
Analogue stick -> Tie

And since the games I play is more suited to the d-pad and do not use heavy use of triggers it's a bit of a non-brainer for me.