Oculus VR to Shut Down Emmy-Winning Film Division ‘Story Studio’
Back in 2014, Oculus VR started a virtual reality film studio called Story Studio with the purpose of producing interactive movies for mainstream audiences. The VR creator was able to earn success as well as an Emmy award for their second film Henry during their first few years of operation. Now, it seems things have gone another way as Oculus’ Jason Rubin has recently announced via a blog post the decision to begin “winding down” the VR company’s Story Studio. The closure is stated to have come after “careful consideration” of the firm’s options to best “make an impact on the [VR] ecosystem.”
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.”
The shutting down of Story Studio doesn’t very well mean Oculus is finished with creative content. According to Rubin, the company remains “absolutely committed to growing the VR film and creative content ecosystem”, having set aside considerable resources to support rising VR projects.
In the same way we invested in the third-party game developers who made the incredible content lineups for Rift and Gear VR, we’re going to allocate more resources to third-party creatives to build out the VR storytelling library,” Rubin added.
Earlier this year, Oculus was involved in a heated legal battle with media company ZeniMax over copyright infringement claims regarding the Rift headset. Oculus’ loss of $500 million USD in the suit may have attributed, at least in part, to their current restructuring. Having also announced their absence from this year’s E3 event, it may appear as though the VR company is in trouble. But upon realizing Oculus is owned by the infinity-dollar empire known as Facebook, it can be assumed they are quite safe for the foreseeable future. Tune in to Don’t Feed the Gamers for more news in the future.
Are you sad to see Story Studio go? Do you think the studio’s closure is attributed to their lawsuit outcome? Have you seen their VR film Henry? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow DFTG on Twitter for gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! For more from the world of VR, see these next few articles:
Eric Hall2712 Posts
Phone-browsing Wikipedia in one hand and clutching his trusty controller in the other, the legendary Eric Hall spreads his wealth of knowledge as a writer for Don't Feed the Gamers. Be sure to catch his biweekly "Throwback Thursday" segment for a nostalgic look at trivia from the past.
