Two years ago Oculus created its Story Studio and today they announced it’s being closed down. Story Studio created a series of VR shorts which included the Emmy Award-winning Unreal Engine powered Henry.
“Oculus is now entering a new chapter in VR development,” said Jason Rubin. “After careful consideration, we’ve decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production”.
Oculus is now looking to fund and support external creative talent and they are to focus their efforts on “internal research, development, and attention towards exciting but unsolved problems in AR and VR hardware and software”.
Rubin reiterated their investment numbers with third-party projects. Last year Oculus funded projects to the tune of $250 million which included Robo Recall, Rock Band VR, and Wilson’s Heart.  From that fund, Oculus is now set to release $50 million to fund non-gaming experiences for VR. Oculus wants to get behind third-parties looking to create more VR stories for their library.
Rubin concluded his update thanking the Story Studio team and added, “Our goal is to inspire creators across all mediums and genres—filmmakers, musicians, painters, writers, cartoonists, and more—to bring their VR ideas to life. There are a lot of awesome things about to be made, and we can’t wait to see them!”
