Jason Rubin joined Oculus in 2014 and has been a key figure in guiding the company’s content investments and strategy. Following the recent Oculus shakeup and deeper absorption into Facebook, Rubin is now overseeing AR and VR content & partnerships at Facebook.

While Oculus had been running largely independently from Facebook after the 2014 acquisition, the years following would see the VR startup slowly pulled deeper into the mothership as several key Oculus figures departed and made way for greater Facebook oversight.

The most recent—the departure of Oculus co-founder and former CEO Brendan Iribe—came amidst reports of a major restructuring of the Oculus unit, purportedly more deeply integrating it into Facebook in an attempt to create a more cohesive immersive technology strategy currently divided among mobile VR, PC VR, and augmented reality.

In that restructuring, Jason Rubin has been officially pulled under the Facebook banner and his purview has expanded from VP of VR content to VP of AR/VR Content & Partnerships.

Rubin’s new role began at least as early as November. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the role change to Road to VR.

“Jason continues to lead our teams that deliver amazing content to VR. There were some internal changes but nothing that impacts how we work with our various developer and creator communities.”

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Rubin brought significant games industry experience to Oculus when he joined in 2014. A co-founder of game studio Naughty Dog and director of noted titles like Crash Bandicoot (1996) and Jak and Daxter (2001), Rubin joined Oculus as the President of Oculus Studios following a brief stint as President of THQ. He was eventually promoted to Head of Content and then to VP of Content before his most recent role change. Rubin has been a key spokesperson and a tempered voice for Oculus throughout his time at the company; he is also seen as one of the last visible pillars of the ‘old’ Oculus.

Rubin’s LinkedIn profile indicates that the role adjustment comes via the “newly combined AR/VR Partnerships and Content teams,” and that his responsibilities in addition to VR are expanding to “Augmented Reality, Portal, and other future technologies developed across Facebook.”

Portal is Facebook’s recently launched videophone; Rubin’s hand in that part of Facebook’s business supports reports of significant restructuring of Oculus within Facebook. Increasingly, Oculus feels more like a brand and less like its own company, though this is quite by design considering the ‘Oculus by Facebook’ branding that began appearing in 2016.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Rogue Transfer

    Oculus hasn’t been a company since September 2018. It’s become a division of Facebook Technologies LLC: https://uploadvr.com/oculus-division-facebook-technologies/

  • impurekind

    Him, Carmack and Abrash are still key figures at Oculus, and I really hope they don’t leave in the near future, because I think it’s these guys and a few that have already left (Luckey, Iribe, etc) who have made most of the good decisions at Oculus to date.

    • jag315

      What do you think their focus should be in 2019? And do you think that focusing exclusively on mobile hardware for these couple years was the right decision?

      • impurekind

        For now, I think they should do what it would seem they [hopefully] plan to do, which is continue three core pillars/platforms that cover all the bases, cheaper mobile/standalone VR like Gear VR and Go, higher end standalone VR like Quest, and full spec PC VR like Rift. I’d like to see a Rift 2 in the near future and then a Go 2 and Quest 2 following that in due course.

        So far I think Oculus has done a better job with VR than basically any other company out there, and I’m generally very happy with my Rift, so I can’t really complain.

        • Blaexe

          “A Quest 2 with around 200 degrees field of view, 90Hz+, and the highest resolution possible at around £199”

          That’s way too ambitious, even with foveated rendering. We’ll probably looking at something around 140° FOV which imo is a very good compromise. After that, diminishing returns will start to seriously kick in (you can already see that with the Pimax) and it will absolutely help in PPD.
          Also I think the price tags will stay the same. Go 200$, Quest 400$, Rift (high end) maybe $500 at launch.

          • impurekind

            It’s only “way too ambitious” for right now. In the near future, which is when I want it, it will be perfectly reasonable imo.

          • Blaexe

            If your definition of “near future” is ~8 years, maybe. That’s not my definition though. Quest 2 will not have 200° FOV. We can talk in a few years.

          • impurekind

            I expect by the time Quest 2 comes out that it will likely be possible to give us around 200 degrees FoV at that point. And if not Quest 2 then almost certainly Quest 3.

      • I get that Go and Quest have largely dominated the conversation in regards to Oculus, but they are not and have never focused “exclusively on mobile hardware”.
        A refreshed Rift headset is planned to drop this year, there are a number of high profile games in the works exclusively for Rift, and Oculus have continued to bring meaningful updates to the PC SDK like ASW 2.0 and tools to soften the burden of converting to OpenVR.
        At this point, Oculus is composed of over 1000 employees, there are plenty of coals in the fire spread across AR/MR/VR, and crucial technology is being heavily researched that impacts every aspect of this industry.
        It’s important to keep in mind the big picture. Just because a company isn’t talking about something, doesn’t mean they aren’t working on it. Releasing the right information at the right time is crucial to properly informing the public and building hype.

  • Firestorm185

    Glad to hear that the name change doesn’t mean he isn’t the head of oculus content anymore, he’s one of the smartest guys there and has certainly helped VR move to where it is today in terms of content.

    • mirak

      Bullshit.

    • Whistlewoods

      “Smart” would be choosing to power up a struggling Independent development community holding up the market, rather than dumping millions into one-off AAA bets that don’t know what the “F” they are doing.

    • FriendlyCard

      hey Robbie! Soul Cell will Sell if it is done right. Nice creative work :)

  • Blaexe

    “Increasingly, Oculus feels more like a brand and less like its own company”

    Maybe because Oculus is not a company anymore…

  • Boy I can’t wait for the Oculus Quest