Patently Apple believes in keeping track of what some of Apple's competitors are up to and late yesterday it was reported that Facebook confirmed it had acquired development studio Sanzaru Games to join the Oculus gaming group inside its virtual-reality division.

Sanzaru has produced a number of games, including from the Sonic the Hedgehog and Marvel Studios franchises, according to its website. The studio’s most popular VR game, Asgard’s Wrath, was highly reviewed at the time of its release in October, and was included several games-of-the-year lists.

Facebook's spokeswoman said in an email. "We’re exploring many ways to accelerate VR. We believe it is great for content to be developed outside of Oculus and Facebook. That said, there are instances where it will make sense for us to have a deeper stake in order to more fully support content development and enhance the user experience." For more on this, read the full Bloomberg report.

Facebook's Oculus made the announcement officially on their blog yesterday stating the following:

"VR is home to many remarkable developers doing incredible work, pioneering a whole new language of game design, and pushing themselves to always achieve more. Sanzaru Games was one of the earliest development houses to take these steps, and, just a few months ago, we saw the state of VR gaming make a huge leap forward with the launch of Asgard’s Wrath, a title that redefined what a full-length, fully-featured VR game looks like. Today, I’m pleased to announce that Sanzaru is joining Facebook to help us pursue a future of rich, immersive, and original VR game content.

Sanzaru is a veteran game developer—having shipped titles to multiple platforms in the past—as well as a VR pioneer: They’ve created four titles for the Oculus Platform since 2016, when they were the first developer to partner with the Oculus Studios team. They approach game design with three pillars in mind: great design, beautiful art (including animation and audio), and strong tech. It is this foundation that enabled Sanzaru to build a game as rich as Asgard’s Wrath, and it’s a strong foundation they will continue to build upon as we all push VR forward.

As part of Oculus Studios and supported by our latest advancements in VR technology, Sanzaru will continue to make amazing VR game experiences for gamers around the world as an independently-operated studio. We couldn’t be more excited to see what they build next.

Why Sanzaru Games?

Sanzaru is a veteran game developer—having shipped games to multiple platforms in the past—as well as a VR pioneer: They’ve created four titles for the Oculus platform since 2016, when they were the first developer to partner with the Oculus Studios team (Ripcoil, VR Sports Challenge, MARVEL Powers United VR, Asgard’s Wrath). With Facebook’s latest advancements in VR technology, Sanzaru can readily explore a future of rich and immersive original VR content.

It appears that Apple will be crashing the Oculus market space at some time in the future. Apple has filed for many patents relating to a future Head Mounted Display system with VR gaming being one of the possible avenues that will Apple will engage in.

While Apple has started with Apple Arcade for mobile gaming, it's very possible that Apple will aim a little higher with more console-like titles and VR gaming would be a natural fit.

In fact, Patently Apple posted a patent application report last Thursday titled "Apple Patent dives deep into Future Mixed Reality gaming with Sophisticated Game Controllers & Next-Gen Console."

The patent filing noted that "the game played by the participants may be hosted by a game console. In some embodiments, the game console may wirelessly serve game video to goggles worn by the participants.

A panoramic optical scanner incorporated into the top of the game console may have a 360 degree panoramic field of view, whereas a set of goggles may incorporate a panoramic optical scanner into each temple portion of the goggles, with each panoramic optical scanner having a 270 degree panoramic field of view that overlaps the 270 degree panoramic field of the other panoramic optical scanner."

A Mixed Reality (MR) Headset is definitely one of several future products that Apple fans are looking forward to.