Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, has upped the ante in its quest to define future hardware by acquiring Carbon Design, the team that designed the Xbox 360 controller.
Carbon Design is also the hardware team that designed the original Kinect controller and a host of other hardware products.
Oculus said it has been working with Carbon for nearly a year on multiple unannounced projects.
“We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire the Carbon Design team, one of the premier industrial design and product engineering teams in the country, with over 50 awards to their name,” Oculus said.
“As part of the deal, the team will officially become a key component of the product engineering group at Oculus, operating from the Carbon studio in the Seattle area.
“They’ll also be working closely with the Oculus R&D team based out of Redmond, Washington. We expect the deal to close by the end of summer,” Oculus said.
An eye on the products of the future
Facebook recently acquired Oculus VR for more than US$3bn. The social networking giant has its eye on the future of communications and entertainment, envisaging a new future for videoconferencing and attending real events, such as concerts and sports matches via virtual reality.
“A few seconds with the latest Oculus prototypes and you know that virtual reality is for real this time,” Carbon said.
“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.”
Oculus Rift image via Shutterstock
