Oculus acquires Carbon, the design team behind the Xbox 360 controller

Oculus VR has been on a hiring spree recently, but now it's made an acquisition: Carbon Design Group, a Seattle-based industrial design firm that designed the Xbox 360 pad and the original Kinect. Oculus has already "been working with Carbon for nearly a year on multiple unannounced projects," according to the official blog post covering the acquisition. "With consumer VR at its inception, the physical architectures are still unknown -- we’re on the cutting edge of defining how virtual reality looks, feels, and functions," said Carbon Design creative director Peter Bristol. Presumably, the award-winning studio will be designing the consumer versions of the Oculus Rift hardware. Carbon has expertise designing everything from consumer electronics to medical equipment and even a motion-activated kitchen faucet. Carbon will continue to operate from its own studio, in collaboration with Oculus' Redmond, Washington and Irvine, California-based offices.