Facebook recently revealed that it would be selling the 3D virtual reality sculpting tool, Oculus Medium, to the software giant, Adobe. This is after Facebook bought the firm Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion. After its development, Oculus Medium was treated separately from Facebook but the company still funded the app with large amounts of money. The app allows users to sculpt, model, and paint in an immersive environment. It works exclusively on the PC-based Oculus Rift headset and many users have also started using it to make films. Even though no details of the sale have been revealed, both Facebook and Adobe are excited about the sale.
Medium stated in a blog post that Adobe is one of the world’s leading creative software companies and they are committed to bringing users the best in 3D tools. It will also be merging it with Adobe Dimension and the Substance tools suite. The company further stated that Medium brings both technology and new talent to Adobe and Adobe solidifies Medium’s reputation as a premium creation tool. The company also praised the new talent that made the sale possible and said that it wouldn’t have been able to happen without them.
Sebastian Deguy, vice president of Adobe 3D and Immersive, said that Medium has been a beacon of creativity in the virtual space and they have been pushing technical boundaries. Many members of the Oculus Medium team will join Adobe as part of the acquisition. Deguy said that Adobe is ready to welcome the new talent with open arms and that they can’t wait to start working on new innovative ideas to further excel in the field of 3D creation. He further mentioned that the joining of forces will help to keep the continuity in the way users are currently experiencing the tools.
Adobe has been making a huge effort to cement itself among the top providers of VR and AR tools in the past few months. At their annual Max conference, the company unveiled Aero, an addition to Creative Cloud that lets users build and share their AR creations. Aero lets users customize their AR experiences and it requires no special knowledge of AR or advanced programming. Adobe also spent $6.43 billion last year when it acquired Marketo and Magneto. It has since expanded in its mergers and acquisitions. Following the Medium announcement, Adobe’s stock rose more than 1%.
Experts have noted that the reason for the sale might be because Facebook wants to scale back on their VR efforts or that Oculus wants to focus on its main tool, Quill. Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, said at a conference in 2018 that the investments in VR and AR had not gone as well as he expected. He mentioned that the long term goal was to get a billion people to use their VR headset thus the Oculus Quest was born. Figures revealed that the company just reached 1% of the goal. He took this lightly but mentioned that they still have their sights set on the goal.
