Facebook AR/VR product head Hugo Barra is being replaced

Facebook’s VP of AR/VR product Hugo Barra is out after some leadership changes at the top of the Oculus organization. After initially being hired to lead the whole VR division, Barra will now be leading global AR/VR partnerships, while Erick Tseng, Facebook’s director of product management, will be replacing Barra in his most recent role leading AR/VR product management.

Barra came on in early 2017 after the ouster of Oculus’s existing leadership structure, when then-CEO Brendan Iribe was demoted alongside much of the founding team to lead product-specific verticals. Later that year Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was ousted.

Barra’s proximity to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s inner-circle was soon diminished after longtime executive Andrew Bosworth was placed ahead of him in the org chart leading AR/VR at Facebook in a role that also included other consumer hardware efforts like Portal. Barra’s transition comes as the company prepares to release two of its latest virtual reality products, the Rift S and Quest.

Late last year, Oculus had an internal reorganization that shifted the team to more specialization-focused groups as opposed to product-focused.

It’s unclear what the full scope of Barra’s new role is. Facebook partnered with Xiaomi — where Barra previously led international efforts — to build the Oculus Go and Xiaomi’s Mi VR headset. Facebook’s recent partnership with Lenovo to build the Rift S showcases just how important these hardware partnerships are to the company.

On Tseng’s promotion, a Facebook spokesperson said, “He is the right person to step into this role because of his experience leading product teams at Facebook, and leading the Android product team at Google.”

Alongside this news, Facebook noted that longtime content exec Jason Rubin has seen his role expand as well and has received a new title, VP of Special Gaming Initiatives.