Oculus hires Scaleform founder as CEO

Scaleform founder Brendan Iribe has been appointed CEO of virtual reality start-up Oculus.

Formerly chief product officer for Gaikai, Iribe joins the company in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign that has raised over $1.6 million of a $250,000 goal.

The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset and devkit that has attracted support from many Industry leaders, such as Gabe Newell, John Carmack, and Cliff Bleszinski, who say this may be the first such peripheral suitable for mass-market distribution.

"The success of our Kickstarter campaign has been overwhelming and a bit humbling, but now it’s time to deliver on the promise,” said Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.

“We’ve done the R&D and have blown people away with our prototypes. These hires, all of whom have many years of experience developing technology for video games, will ensure that we first deliver rock-solid dev kits, then a consumer product that takes video games to a completely new level of immersion.”

Iribe is joined by Michael Antonov, with whom he co-founded Scaleform, who will serve as chief software architect for the Oculus Rift.

Jack McCauley, formerly the leader of development at ROR3 for peripherals like Activision’s guitar and drum controllers, will serve as vice president of engineering.

“For years we’ve talked about virtual reality, and how amazing it would be to actually play within a game, rather than just watch it happen in front of you on a screen,” said Iribe.

“As a serial entrepreneur, I thrive in start-up environments, and Oculus is as exciting and disruptive as they come. The core technology is already there. Now it’s up to the growing team at Oculus to get it into the hands of both developers and gamers everywhere.”