Iribe vacates role as Oculus CEO

Oculus has divided itself into separate PC and mobile divisions, with CEO Brendan Iribe stepping down as part of the changes.

Iribe will head up the new PC business, while former Microsoft man Jon Thomason, who joined the company in August, will lead its mobile operations. Both founder Palmer Luckey and CTO John Carmack remain with the company.

Oculus recently launched its Touch Controllers that compliment its Rift VR headset. It also partners with Samsung for the mobile-based Gear VR package.

Changing the world on that scale has required us to also scale Oculus at warp speed. With our growth and product strategy, we’ve decided to establish new PC and mobile VR groups to be more focused, strengthen development and accelerate our roadmap,” Iribe said.

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.

You do your best work when you love what you’re working on. If that’s not the case, you need to make a change. With this new role, I can dive back into engineering and product development. That’s what gets me up every day, inspired to run to work.”