Laird M. Malamed, who formerly worked as senior vice president and head of development at Activision Blizzard, has recently joined the Oculus VR team as COO. The team is working on Oculus Rift, the first major attempt to bring VR gaming to the masses.
Speaking to GIBiz on his motives for joining Oculus, Malamed stated that, “It was a good combination of passionate people, products that looked really good, and people who had successfully taken smart ideas and turned them into real ventures.
“What the team here at Oculus VR is doing is incredible, solving fantasies that many of us fans of science fiction and computer gaming have had since the earliest experiences of virtual reality in television shows or books or comics. The first and foremost thing that really attracted me to the opportunity here is they’ve really figured it out.”
While Malamed believes “there is a desire for this kind of product”, he also felt that while they’re “not sure what our pricing will be yet but it would not surprise me if it had three digits in front of the decimal place.”
Considering the team aims to compete with established professionals such as Microsoft and Sony, along with Valve and it’s upcoming Steam Box, it’ll be interesting to see how Oculus Rift pans out on release.