Monday, February 24, 2014

Oculus Rift production stalled due to scarce resources

Oculus VR has announced that they will be temporarily halting production of their virtual reality headsets due to the lack of core components.





While there have been some 50,000 Oculus Rifts sold so far, the company behind the revolutionary gaming peripheral has announced that they will be stalling further production of the VR headsets until adequate resources can be acquired.

According to Oculus VR community manager Andres Hernandez, the core components for the headsets are no longer being manufactured, leading to a hiatus in the fabrication of dev units. Hernandez posted the news on the official sub-Reddit with the following:
“Certain components used in the Oculus Rift developer kit are no longer being manufactured, meaning they are no longer available to us for production. As a result, we don’t have the necessary materials to produce additional kits.”

Hernandez adds that the company does have some Oculus Rift units in stock, but the inventory will be limited and is expected to sell out fast due to the production halt.
“We still have some stock available, but we’re quickly running out. We are looking into alternate sources for the needed components, and we don’t yet have a timeline for when additional units will be available. We’ll be sure to keep everyone posted.”



When Rift stock sells out across various territories, the company will in turn temporarily hold off sales until more materials can be gathered. Hernandez reports that inventory is currently limited to just eight regions, which include North America, certain parts of Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Oculus VR has no estimation as to when they can pick up where they left off, and although this may seem to be a setback for the future of the groundbreaking device, the company will be able to glean feedback from the 50,000+ strong community of gamers and developers.

While the team will already have a substantial base of testers, the loss in production forgoes the potential for further expansion in the testing realm–more units can lead to more purchases, thus leading to a more diverse testing pool.

The team will no-doubt keep busy during this period, as there are still quite a few kinks to work out before the VR headset arrives on the retail market. This hiatus will most likely delay the official consumer release of the unit, which may prove to be disappointing to gamers across the globe.

Furthermore it’s worth mentioning that Oculus VR has trademarked the term “Riftcon”, which points to a convention-style gathering to promote the next step in immersion gaming. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few months, and whether or not the Rift’s consumer release is affected by this stall.

Via IGN



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