The Oculus-Microsoft alliance is just a stopgap, not a powershift

One of the biggest surprises this morning from Oculus VR’s press briefing was its official alliance with Microsoft. The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset comes packaged with an Xbox One controller, and it will be able to stream Xbox One games.

At first glance, this looks like a huge win for Microsoft. It gets its controller and games associated with the biggest name in virtual reality — and social networks, once you take into account that Facebook, with a worldwide community of 1.4 billion active members, owns Oculus VR. (Microsoft has a 1.3 percent stake in Facebook.) But in reality, this is just a stopgap until both companies have their own content and hardware ecosystems in place.