Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR doesn’t seem to be slowing down the demand for Oculus Rift dev kits.
When Tech Crunch that it has sold 25,000 Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2s since the pre-order page went live on March 19. To put things into perspective for you, the original Oculus Rift Dev Kit sold around 60,000 units in its entire lifetime, meaning DK2 has sold almost half that number in a single month. Turns out people really want to either develop, or experience, virtual reality, no matter what company is backing it. Who’d have thought?
“We never expected to sell so many development kits,” wrote a Oculus Rift community manager last month after a component shortage forced the company to halt sales of the first development kit. These sales figures echo a statement made by another community manager earlier in the month, when he said that the Rift was selling “just fine”.
Oculus stresses that the current Rift hardware is simply a “preview” meant for developers only and “not a consumer product.” Indeed, while 25,000 units in one month is impressive for a developer kit, it falls rather short of what you’d expect from a consumer product. For comparison, Microsoft and Sony said sales of the XBOX One and PS4 reached approximately 3 million and 4 million, respectively, last year.
Have you bought an Oculus dev kit? Did the Facebook buyout affect your decision in any way? I’m waiting for the consumer product, as while it’s a neat idea, I’d rather wait for them to iron out all the kinks before committing to it.
Source: Tech Crunch
