Oculus ends Rift dev kit sales citing parts supply issues
As forewarned, Oculus VR is officially ending sales of its first-run development kit. "We're quickly running out of stock for the Rift development kit, so we've shut down sales in most regions," a note from Oculus says. Specifically, the issue comes from certain pieces of the headset "no longer being manufactured." That said, those headsets are more than a little long in the tooth at this point: both the HD version and the Crystal Cove prototype take giant leaps past the first dev unit, to say nothing of Valve's prototype. Oculus isn't offering anything official in terms of word on new dev kits (beyond what the company's CTO told us last year), but we expect many devs already have some form of new hardware from the fast-growing VR company.
As of today, Oculus sold approximately 60,000 original dev kits; at $300 apiece, that's about $18 million in just dev kit sales (without factoring in the cost to manufacture and ship those dev kits, that is). Of course, that's a paltry figure compared with the enormous amount of money backing Oculus: just shy of $100 million in venture capital and personal investments. In so many words, it'll require serious sales numbers of the forthcoming retail VR headset to make Oculus into a profitable company (at least in the short term).
As for official word on the next dev kit from Oculus VR, we expect it won't be too far way. Oculus itself says, "We'll have more news on this soon, so stay tuned!" With GDC next week and E3 looming ever-closer by the day, we're getting ready for that news any minute.
