It’s been an announcement the virtual reality (VR) industry has been awaiting for just over a month now, but finally the new head of Oculus has been confirmed. In a post on his own account, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that Hugo Barra will now lead the VR company on its future endeavours.
Heading the Oculus team at Facebook, Barra brings with him years of experience having been Vice President at Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, and prior to that VP of Android Product Management at Google.
In his Facebook post Zuckerberg said: “I’m excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team. Hugo’s in China right now, so here we are together in VR. It seems fitting.
“I’ve known Hugo for a long time, starting when he helped develop the Android operating system, to the last few years he’s worked at Xiaomi in Beijing bringing innovative devices to millions of people.
“Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform. They’ll enable us to experience completely new things and be more creative than ever before. Hugo is going to help build that future, and I’m looking forward to having him on our team.”
To which Barra responded: Thanks, Mark! I can’t wait to get started in building that future and join the team in a couple of months. It’s been a dream of mine to work in virtual reality even back when AR/VR were just figments of science fiction; now we’re taking selfies in virtual worlds. I learned from Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun that there’s no greater calling in our industry than taking breakthrough tech and making it available to the greatest number of people. Really looking forward to doing just that at Facebook — taking VR mainstream — working with you, Brendan, Mike Schroepfer, and the Oculus team!”
So while it’s going to be a couple of months until Barra joins the company fully, Oculus’ previous CEO Brendan Iribe will helm the PC focused arm of the business while Jon Thomason will lead the mobile side. What’s still unclear is where original founder and previous face of Oculus, Palmer Luckey, will fit in.
For further coverage of Oculus, keep reading VRFocus.