Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus is creating two divisions — one focused on PC, the other on mobile — and Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus, is stepping down from his current position to helm the PC division.
Oculus Reshuffling
The corporate reshuffling leaves Oculus a vacant spot for a new CEO as Iribe leads the PC group and Jon Thomason, Oculus' head of software, leads the mobile group. Iribe regarded the structure shake-up as a development-bolstering move, among other things.
"Changing the world on that scale has required us to also scale Oculus at warp speed," said Iribe in a blog post. "[W]e've decided to establish new PC and mobile VR groups to be more focused, strengthen development and accelerate our roadmap."
Iribe's New Position
Part of his new role sees Iribe "pushing the state of VR forward with Rift, research and computer vision," which according to him is where he's most passionate.
"I really missed the deep, day-to-day involvement in building a brand new product on the leading edge of technology."
Iribe's step-down is an odd inflection point for Oculus, given that posts atop the corporate ladder at Facebook-owned companies rarely become vacant, as is the case with Instagram and WhatsApp, presently helmed still by their cofounders pre-acquisition.
At the time of Facebook's Oculus acquisition, Iribe, along with Palmer Luckey, were credited as the co-founders. Luckey is still with Oculus, though his exact role hasn't been disclosed. However, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a spokeswoman as the source, that Lucky will share details of his role soon.
A New Leader
Iribe and Thomason will join Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's CTO, in finding a new leader, the operative word being "leader," since as per the spokeswoman, Oculus is looking for someone who can lead both mobile and PC teams, and not someone to lend the CEO title to.
Oculus' structural change adds to the company's shaky year, mired by shipping woes and unexpectedly loft price points for its VR headsets. Oculus at present still lacks a system-selling VR game to usurp its contemporaries HTC with its Vive headset co-developed by Valve, and Sony with its PlayStation VR, which has the advantage of borrowing from the PS4's firm library.
Looking Into The Future
During its developers conference this past October, Oculus showed off a new standalone VR headset it's currently developing, and that it will shell out as much as $250 million for VR content creators, on top of $250 million already spent.
