Oculus Mobile VR Head Max Cohen Leaves Facebook
Following the recent departures of Oculus co-founders Nate Mitchell and Brendan Uribe, another top Oculus veteran Max Cohen is leaving the company at the end of month according to a LinkedIn page created in his name. Cohen was the former head of mobile VR at Oculus.
He started as Oculus vice president for mobile in 2014 and led the company’s Gear VR partnership with Samsung. Cohen also spearheaded the development of the Oculus Go headset and commenced the initial work on the Quest headset that was launched a few months ago. He was one of the longest serving Oculus executives, having joined the company even before it was acquired by Facebook. On his LinkedIn page, he has stated he is now an “explorer” moving on to “pursuing new skills and incubating ideas”.
Prior to his departure, Nate Mitchell was the head of VR product. He was one of the four original Oculus co-founders and he quit Facebook less than two weeks ago. His departure had been preceded by that of the other Oculus co-founders Brendan Uribe and Palmer Luckey.
Facebook did not comment on the departure. Cohen was on Oculus AR/VR team where he was heading the product management for media at the time of his departure.
Facebook XR Team in Flux
It’s curious that Facebook’s top AR/VR staff has been in flux over the recent months. In May, two of Facebook’s top executives Hugo Barra who is responsible for Oculus Strategy and Facebook’s game manager Jason Rubin switched roles.
In October 2018, Oculus co-founder Brendan Uribe who was also responsible for PC VR quit Facebook allegedly due to disagreement over Facebook’s VR marketing strategy. Then last week saw the departure of Nate Mitchell.
This could also be connected to Facebook’s announcement last November that it was restructuring its Oculus team away from product focus to technology focus to create an innovative environment where the experts were more closely linked into teams in order to eliminate R&D redundancy.
https://virtualrealitytimes.com/2019/08/24/oculus-mobile-vr-head-max-cohen-leaves-facebook/https://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Max-Cohen-600x450.jpghttps://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Max-Cohen-150x90.jpgBusinessOculusFollowing the recent departures of Oculus co-founders Nate Mitchell and Brendan Uribe, another top Oculus veteran Max Cohen is leaving the company at the end of month according to a LinkedIn page created in his name. Cohen was the former head of mobile VR at Oculus. He started as Oculus...Sam OchanjiSam Ochanji[email protected]EditorVirtual Reality Times - Metaverse & VR