Oculus is coming to the UK in a significant way it seems, as they prepare to open a dedicated base in London with a team that’s apparently gearing up to build some “really cool stuff” for virtual reality.

Social media giant Facebook has positions throughout the world, but one of its key bases, according to the Telegraph, is the UK. Now it seems it wants to expand its presence specifically in the VR arena by opening a base in London dedicated to Oculus and virtual reality.

Mike LeBeau, Oculus
Mike LeBeau, Oculus

According to a Facebook comment, posted by Mike LeBeau who is set to lead the new UK team, the new team will be focused on building “some really cool stuff” for virtual reality. LeBeau hails from Google, where he was a senior engineer and apparently instrumental in the development of the technology firm’s voice search technology. LeBeau moved to the UK to join Oculus in January, his LinkedIn profile indicates as Product Manager.

The Telegraph also notes that there’s been a lot of social media activity, specifically on LinkedIn, recently that indicated Oculus are due to ramp up the team in the UK perhaps for new and key initiatives in the virtual reality arena.

Oculus already has a couple of bases around the world, with key offices in Seoul and Hong Kong, but although they’ve had UK representatives for some time, this feels like a  move to build more important significant presence in Europe with a firther reported 8 new employees listed as UK based in the last few months.

The Telegraph managed to get an official response from Oculus on what their plans for the new UK office were, they responded tantalisingly “we’ll have more to share on our international plans soon”.

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Paul James
Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.

  • Hummm, don’t see the jobs on their website other than for a UX post – perhaps they are up and coming.

  • Pete

    Let me guess, it’s a new VR DRM……. :/

    • Ombra Alberto

      What a bore .

    • guest

      nailed it.

  • Ghosty

    Lol… So they plan on making cool stuff you can only play on their hmd…. Screw Oculus and their exclusives…. Cutting out half of the VR market is just stupid… Software makes the money and we are repeat customers… Just bad business! Why would you ever want to limit your customer base?

    • Rick

      Enough with that crappy argument people. Oculus aren’t making exclusives. Developers can make the games support what ever they want. There is just a lot of Devs that have been working on their games with oculus dev kits for a long time(as oculus has had them for a much long time than the vive). The fact that the store doesn’t support the Vive is a “no shit” moment. Steam has been alive for a decade and valve has the dev team with experience in making a store that supports any and all tech. Oculus JUST launched their store, give them some time. If anything, blame the freakin devs for not launching on steam as well. Its not oculus’ job to support every headset maker with their store. Hell, steam even launched with Half life 2(A STEAM EXCLUSIVE). Lastly, the issue with the latest patch breaking the mod allowing Vive to work with home, they warned that it would probably break it. If they want to support the Vive officially in the future, why wouldn’t they try and patch any type of security holes regardless if it breaks a mod that is offering what they will offer anyway? It’s VR, they most likely don’t want some ‘hacked in’ solution to show case virtual reality.

      I use both steam vr and Oculus home all the time. Steam VR offers some great built in feature such as supporting the Oculus as well as the vive, Web browser, Desktop Mirroring, but It is SEVERELY lacking in polish in my opinion. While the Oculus home is lacking in some of those features right out of the gate, It is much more polished for what little it has. Things such as the Home menu, The way it tuns on and off through proximity, and the fact that if the game freezes while loading oculus prevents motion sickness by creating a black world and leaves the game as a floating display. Both stores will get better and more Devs will support both platforms. At this early stage you cant blame oculus for wanting to make sure their product does well first before they support others, and you can’t blame steam for Not having a ton of Polish with all their features.

      Any way rant over. If you made it this far i’m impressed. Just tired of people bashing on the oculus because other people are.

      • Pete

        I ordered both Rift and Vive. My Rift hasn’t got to me yet. But Oculus is making me hate them with their exclusive crap. They don’t even have a full gaming system to put exclusives. Its like putting an exclusive game on a monitor. They are just trying to monopolize the market and it’s back firing on them.

        Oculus is becoming the EA of today with all their actions against the people.

      • guest

        Maybe because they deserve it. They are going to lock everything down so you can only use 1 specific type of hardware. That would be like you buying a game only to find it won’t load because you bought the wrong brand of monitor. Fucking stupid

  • guest

    not interested until they cut this exclusive crap. for fucks sake, keep VR open, let people enjoy it instead of walling them in or out. Show some pride and courage in your work.