The Oculus Rift VR headset has gotten so unexpectedly popular so quickly that the company has run out of the components needed to make the thing.
A statement on the headset’s Reddit page says “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.”
Oculus still has a few units left in stock, but once they’re gone, there will be no more headsets made until they can find “alternate sources for the needed components”.
The shortage is testament to just how insanely popular the headset has become; the model currently on sale is intended for developers only, but has nevertheless sold over 50,000 units, a figure the company “never expected” to reach.
Can’t wait to see the eBay prices these things hit if an alternate supplier can’t be found soon.
Official Oculus Shipping Status Update (Feb 19th 2014) [Reddit, via Gamespot]
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10 responses to “Oculus Rift Runs Out Of Materials, Production Halted”
Saturday called looking for their article. Should I send them here?
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/02/oculus-rift-stops-production-of-development-kits-cites-lack-of-materials/
To be fair, a lot of people probably only read Kotaku at work and may not have seen it on Saturday.
This’d be a reprint of an American version of the article. Notice how the one you linked has the ‘Australian’ tag and is also well written, containing more information.
That’s the actual reason I linked it. The Australian versions are always better.
That’s something I never understand. Why does the Australian site bring over American articles about things they’ve already run?
I’m fairly sure it’s just automated; done automatically over the net. I would say no human has a say in what gets published.
Plunkett’d yet again
Instead of linking the American ones here, link the Australian ones there.
From the headlines one would think there would be no more OR headsets being made, full stop. Oh, it was sensationalism… Because there’s no actual talent behind the writing of the articles.
I wonder what implications this might have on the consumer model – ie. are these components just specific to the dev model or is it something more intrinsic to the rift itself?
They are only for the current devkit, which is outdated and probably should stop its production run anyway.
It has nothing to do with the new devkit (or the commercial release) that is coming towards the end of this year.
Basically a nothing story.