Oculus VR: "Wouldn't partner with Microsoft or Sony"

Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe has explained that the company wouldn't have partnered with Sony or Microsoft because they already had their own platforms.

"If we were going to partner with somebody, because this is a long road ahead ... we were thinking the whole time that we wouldn't partner with Microsoft or Sony," Iribe said on stage at Business Insider's Ignition conference, explaining the Oculus headset shouldn't be tied to existing consoles.

"This really needs to be a new platform."

He added that Google also wasn't an attractive partner for the company because its attention was already split over a number of larger projects.

"We didn't know how much time we'd get from the leadership team."

Of course Oculus VR did partner and it did it with a bang and $2 billion in a deal with Facebook in March. According to Iribe the social focus of Facebook also helped to seal the deal.

"Facebook is run in an open way that's aligned with Oculus' culture. Over the last decade, Mark and Facebook have been champions of open software and hardware, pushing the envelope of innovation for the entire tech industry," Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey posted on Reddit eight months ago.

"As Facebook has grown, they've continued to invest in efforts like with the Open Compute Project, their initiative that aims to drive innovation and reduce the cost of computing infrastructure across the industry. This is a team that's used to making bold bets on the future."