Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe steps down, to lead PC-based VR division now

In a major internal restructuring, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe has announced that he is stepping down as CEO of the Facebook-owned VR company and instead would be leading the PC VR group within the company.

“Looking ahead and thinking about where I’m most passionate, I’ve decided to lead the PC VR group — pushing the state of VR forward with Rift, research and computer vision. As we’ve grown, I really missed the deep, day-to-day involvement in building a brand new product on the leading edge of technology,” Iribe wrote in a blog post.

“We’ll continue investing deeply in research and development in computer vision, displays, optics, graphics, audio, input and more to create the breakthroughs that will unlock new form factors and experiences. We’re going to move faster at solving the grand challenges of virtual reality," he added.

The restructuring is part of Oculus’ efforts to further enhance its VR capabilities. Hence, the company is internally dividing itself into two distinct groups, where one would focus their efforts on desktop VR (Oculus Rift) and the other on mobile VR (Samsung Gear VR).

Iribe will be shifting his role to leading the company’s efforts on PC-based virtual reality. Jon Thomason, who joined Oculus this summer after previously working as VP of mobile shopping at Amazon and VP of Engineering at Qualcomm, will be heading up efforts on the mobile VR front.

Iribe, along with Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer, will now be leading efforts to select his successor to manage the pair of teams at the virtual reality company.

Iribe has been the CEO of Oculus VR since its inception in 2012, working with founder Palmer Luckey to bring virtual reality into the mainstream.

The announcement comes on the heels of the much delayed release of company’s $199 Oculus Touch motion controllers earlier this month. Apparently, Oculus is currently working on a standalone wireless headset as well.