If you were hoping to get your hands on an Oculus Rift any time soon it looks like you are out of luck as Facebook CFO David Wehner has told investors there are no plans to ship the device this year.
“We have not announced any specific plans for shipment volumes in 2015 related to Oculus,” Wehner said. “I just know that Oculus is very much in the development stage so it’s early to be talking about large shipment volumes.”
David was responding to a question on an investor call, and completely ignored another question which was “Will the initial product focus on gaming?”
Valve’s HTC Vive VR headset is expected to hit the shelves later this year with Sony’s Project Morpheus following it in the first half of 2016, so it looks like Oculus may be last to the party. However, the Vive headset will be costly, “Starting with the premium experience, even if it has a slightly higher price point, is the right thing to do from a strategic point of view,” explained HTC Connected Products Marketing Executive Director Jeff Gattis.
Mark Zuckerberg has stated that Oculus needs to sell 50-100 million units over the next ten years before it becomes a “meaningful thing”. If Oculus is late to the party, he may find that difficult.
Source: MCV / Seeking Alpha
Dazbobaby
50-100 million units of any single item is a LOT of units, even over 10 years. Especially when the end user has to have some big hefty GPU/GPU’s to do the heavy lifting.
So I guess they had better be working on console compatibility too.
Starman
I actually thought this was out already, which shows how much interest I have in VR tech!
beeje13
It’s available, but not officially to the average joe consumer.
Starman
I thought it was something like that. “you can buy it if you really really want it” kind of deal.
beeje13
Yeah it is like that, you just put fake info down when they ask what software you plan to develop for it. Or get it off ebay!
beeje13
Competition stronger than anticipated, methinks.
bunimomike
Not only that but I’m sure they’re well aware of a majority of people not really being interested in it.
bunimomike
I should clarify. I love the idea of VR, just not the headset. :-)
beeje13
To clarify a little more :), you don’t like the Rift headset, or the idea of headsets being used for vr instead?
Severn2j
Thats a real shame, I’ve been holding off buying an Occulus DK2 because they’ve always been saying the consumer version was around the corner. But since Facebook bought them, its almost like development has stopped.
Coupled with Valve’s offering looking like its going to be a much better headset and the rift is starting to look a bit weak.
Considering the apparent good quality of the DK2, I think Facebook/Occulus need to release something soon, even if they then release a 2.0 version later. Just so they an stay relevant, if nothing else.
The Lone Steven
I’ve seen a development kit of this in my local Cex and was reminded of the Virtual Boy. Probably not a good thing. The sheer amount of units they must sell to break even is a bit of a tall order as i can see Sony and Valve devices outpreforming the Rift and giving them trouble with marketing due to their wallets being deeper.