Oculus Rift Sales May Be Suspended as Components Run Low

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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One of the first concerns to a startup would and should be insuring that your supply chain is set up and able to provide continuous material to produce your product as long as need be. The production of the Oculus Rift Dev kits may be in jeopardy due to lack of availability of certain components crucial to the Oculus Rift manufacture.

Although the unit is still unavailable to consumers, the special developer version, aimed at companies wanting to design VR games and applications, has sold over 50,000 units worldwide.
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Sounds like it was the product that was too good to be true. I hope I'm wrong, but doesn't look good, why would they tell the press without also sharing a backup plan?
 
ol1bit said:
Sounds like it was the product that was too good to be true. I hope I'm wrong, but doesn't look good, why would they tell the press without also sharing a backup plan?
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It's not too good to be true. Everything we've seen so far shows it to be an amazing product, which is why it's in short supply. I mean John Carmac from ID left to go work for Oculus Rift, that means a hell of a lot by itself.

It's ugly because it's a prototype unit, not meant for general consumer use. If this was something you could walk into best-buy and pickup, then I'd tend to agree with you.
 
I wish I would have given one a try at RTX when I had the chance. Just didn't want to wait in line that long so skipped over it.

Looks like a very neat device. I hope they resolve the issue they are having getting the needed parts.
 
I guess from one point of view it's a good problem to have, but only if you can get it sorted out very quickly.
 
The first dev kit is near EOL anyway. The next Dev kit shares little in common with the original.
 
ol1bit said:
Sounds like it was the product that was too good to be true. I hope I'm wrong, but doesn't look good, why would they tell the press without also sharing a backup plan?
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Read the article before you comment...

The components used to construct the first-gen dev-kit are in short supply, which are entirely different from the components that are used in second-gen dev-kit.

No real problem here, just means they'll have to finalize one of their current prototypes for release (which uses ALREADY uses readily available components). We should see a second-gen dev-kit pop up for sale shortly.
 
I was going to say the same thing. This is a good thing. It means they are closing out the old dev kit (that from the get go had too large and low rez of a panel), and will start shipping out the second gen ones... before hopefully cranking the final production Occulus later this year.
 
I feel like Oculus is going to become vaporware if it doesn't offer up some kind of time table for consumer release. I'm also getting sick of reading articles about it. I haven't used it so I have no idea what its like and showing videos of people wearing it and playing games means nothing to me.. NOTHING.

Put up or shut up Oculus.
 
Godmachine said:
I feel like Oculus is going to become vaporware if it doesn't offer up some kind of time table for consumer release. I'm also getting sick of reading articles about it. I haven't used it so I have no idea what its like and showing videos of people wearing it and playing games means nothing to me.. NOTHING.

Put up or shut up Oculus.
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Haha...you know they used crowd sourcing to fund development right? Why on earth would you advocate for the company to shut up? As a company the Rift has only been in development for a year and a good part of that year was hiring for a team. Yet they've already sold 50,000+ development kits, hired industry legends, and shown fast progress with prototypes using read readily accessible components. Yes...sounds like vaporware to me too.
 
Dalingrin said:
Haha...you know they used crowd sourcing to fund development right? Why on earth would you advocate for the company to shut up? As a company the Rift has only been in development for a year and a good part of that year was hiring for a team. Yet they've already sold 50,000+ development kits, hired industry legends, and shown fast progress with prototypes using read readily accessible components. Yes...sounds like vaporware to me too.
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So? We have no time table for release. We have demos after demos after demos , we have some support announced but nothing unified at the moment. Selling 50,000 of something means jack shit you do realize? Even at the $1500 price point. Google sold thousands upon thousands of Google Glass at that price point and now they intend for you to buy it at your local eye glasses place at the mall at around $200-300 but at least they have a time table and end game planned so I can actually get somewhat interested in it. John Carmack hasn't produced anything worth while in years in video gaming and his last game was scrapped and restarted. People act like he walks on water but he hasn't done anything in ages. While I respect his work and intelligence neither of those things are certain to produce results. Prototypes by the way are often many , many generations before the final release.

The Xbox One had over 100 prototype body designs before a final one was created. That's not counting probably a hundred prototype controller designs and 100 prototype Kinect 2.0 designs. The iPhone went through around some 27 prototypes over years of development as well. Right now we have no idea if the current Oculus design will be final specs or not.

With no time table and only some developers getting on board it might as well just be vaporware for the time being. It could be years before it could reach the consumer level , it not only has to be usable without throwing up after a few hours of use but it has to cost at least under $500 and even that will be a tough sell to some. My friend bought a $1500 development kit for his company and he constantly sings its praises but even he admits if it will be able to release at the consumer level or if it will be years from now when display tech has caught up and GPU's have gotten more powerful in the mid range level. Oculus doesn't want its VR to be exclusive to high end PC gaming , they want as wide a range as possible. They've even considered the PS4 for use with the Oculus but that isn't likely to pan out.

I couldn't care less how great a project looks on paper , until some kind of end game is planned then its just fanciful hype and beta kits. I used VR decades ago when it was a total joke and ever since then everyone has tried to make it work because it could be the next true evolution of user interface and Oculus might just be that evolution. Until some kind of time table is announced I'm going to treat it like a "development" project with lots of hype and I think that's a fair opinion on it.
 
That is because it is a development project. Rome wasn't built in a day, either are 99% of the electronics you own especially when they were ground breaking in development. Did you rock ssd's in the 90s? Did you have ddr 2 years before everyone else? how was your smartphone in 2001?

kickstarter adds alot of transparency. similar to steam greenlights it also adds alot of people that are not use to development, alpha, beta stages etc, even more so for devices themselves that may of been hidden from public eyes during YEARS of R&D.
 
Godmachine said:
So? We have no time table for release. We have demos after demos after demos , we have some support announced but nothing unified at the moment. Selling 50,000 of something means jack shit you do realize? Even at the $1500 price point. Google sold thousands upon thousands of Google Glass at that price point and now they intend for you to buy it at your local eye glasses place at the mall at around $200-300 but at least they have a time table and end game planned so I can actually get somewhat interested in it. John Carmack hasn't produced anything worth while in years in video gaming and his last game was scrapped and restarted. People act like he walks on water but he hasn't done anything in ages. While I respect his work and intelligence neither of those things are certain to produce results. Prototypes by the way are often many , many generations before the final release.

The Xbox One had over 100 prototype body designs before a final one was created. That's not counting probably a hundred prototype controller designs and 100 prototype Kinect 2.0 designs. The iPhone went through around some 27 prototypes over years of development as well. Right now we have no idea if the current Oculus design will be final specs or not.

With no time table and only some developers getting on board it might as well just be vaporware for the time being. It could be years before it could reach the consumer level , it not only has to be usable without throwing up after a few hours of use but it has to cost at least under $500 and even that will be a tough sell to some. My friend bought a $1500 development kit for his company and he constantly sings its praises but even he admits if it will be able to release at the consumer level or if it will be years from now when display tech has caught up and GPU's have gotten more powerful in the mid range level. Oculus doesn't want its VR to be exclusive to high end PC gaming , they want as wide a range as possible. They've even considered the PS4 for use with the Oculus but that isn't likely to pan out.

I couldn't care less how great a project looks on paper , until some kind of end game is planned then its just fanciful hype and beta kits. I used VR decades ago when it was a total joke and ever since then everyone has tried to make it work because it could be the next true evolution of user interface and Oculus might just be that evolution. Until some kind of time table is announced I'm going to treat it like a "development" project with lots of hype and I think that's a fair opinion on it.
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Your thesis is that it should be treated as a development project? I thought that much was obvious.

The development kit is $300 not $1500. $300 is the target for the consumer version as well. You snicker at 50,000+ development kits? I'd call that a success for a crowd funded VR project. It is enough to get a nearly $100 million in investment capital.

By all means be skeptical but don't be a cynic just for the sake of being a cynic.
 
Godmachine said:
So? We have no time table for release. We have demos after demos after demos , we have some support announced but nothing unified at the moment. Selling 50,000 of something means jack shit you do realize? Even at the $1500 price point. Google sold thousands upon thousands of Google Glass at that price point and now they intend for you to buy it at your local eye glasses place at the mall at around $200-300 but at least they have a time table and end game planned so I can actually get somewhat interested in it. John Carmack hasn't produced anything worth while in years in video gaming and his last game was scrapped and restarted. People act like he walks on water but he hasn't done anything in ages. While I respect his work and intelligence neither of those things are certain to produce results. Prototypes by the way are often many , many generations before the final release.

The Xbox One had over 100 prototype body designs before a final one was created. That's not counting probably a hundred prototype controller designs and 100 prototype Kinect 2.0 designs. The iPhone went through around some 27 prototypes over years of development as well. Right now we have no idea if the current Oculus design will be final specs or not.

With no time table and only some developers getting on board it might as well just be vaporware for the time being. It could be years before it could reach the consumer level , it not only has to be usable without throwing up after a few hours of use but it has to cost at least under $500 and even that will be a tough sell to some. My friend bought a $1500 development kit for his company and he constantly sings its praises but even he admits if it will be able to release at the consumer level or if it will be years from now when display tech has caught up and GPU's have gotten more powerful in the mid range level. Oculus doesn't want its VR to be exclusive to high end PC gaming , they want as wide a range as possible. They've even considered the PS4 for use with the Oculus but that isn't likely to pan out.

I couldn't care less how great a project looks on paper , until some kind of end game is planned then its just fanciful hype and beta kits. I used VR decades ago when it was a total joke and ever since then everyone has tried to make it work because it could be the next true evolution of user interface and Oculus might just be that evolution. Until some kind of time table is announced I'm going to treat it like a "development" project with lots of hype and I think that's a fair opinion on it.
Click to expand...

The issue with your post is that you are looking at something like the Xbox One made by Microsoft who has mountains of money and doesn't need to let anyone know what they are doing. For something like the Oculus Rift they are working on a new product and need funds from others. If they just went silent while going through all their versions till the final one there would be a few issues. One nobody would know that they were even working on anything, there would be no demand for the product and people wouldn't be as willing to give them money. You also wouldn't have people with dev kits in hand trying to work on making their games / software work with the devices.

I wouldn't expect this to be final specs for some time. Just like how the dev kids sent to development companies for the Xbox One wasn't the final hardware.
 
Dev kit supply is drying up, and still no word on a commercial release. Hopefully they get this sorted.
 
Hopefully this doesn't mean a delay for the consumer version even though we still have no idea when it's coming out, last I heard was the end of this year but who knows now.
 
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