Kickstarter Alum Oculus Pulls the Plug on Virtual Reality Shop Story Studio

In an effort to continue its creative development in virtual reality (VR), Kickstarter success Oculus announced it was shutting down its Story Studio. According to the company, Story Studio has created a series of VR shorts, which includes Lost, Henry, and Sea Angelica.

Sharing details about the studio’s closure, the Oculus team stated:

“We’re now entering the next chapter of VR development, where new creators enter the market in anticipation of adoption and growth, and we’ve been looking at the best way to allocate our resources to create an impact on the ecosystem. After careful consideration, we’ve decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production. As part of that shift, we’ll be winding down Story Studio. Now that a large community of filmmakers and developers are committed to the narrative VR art form, we’re going to focus on funding and supporting their content. This helps us turn our internal research, development, and attention towards exciting but unsolved problems in AR and VR hardware and software. We’re still absolutely committed to growing the VR film and creative content ecosystem.”

The Oculus team also noted that they are planning to use $50 million from its 2016 $250 million funds to financial commit to non-gaming, VR content.

Last year, we committed an additional $250M to fund VR content from developers all over the world. That investment supported games like Robo Recall, Rock Band VR, and Wilson’s Heart, plus powerful VR experiences like Through the Ages from Felix & Paul and the Follow My Lead experience featuring the 2016 NBA finals. We’re going to carve out $50M from that financial commitment to exclusively fund non-gaming, experiential VR content. This money will go directly to artists to help jumpstart the most innovative and groundbreaking VR ideas.”

Oculus went on to add its team will continue providing resources and programs to help creators get started, including video tutorials, production and distribution tips, best practices for VR development, and chances to connect with leaders in the community.


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