Oculus may have created a huge controversy in the industry when it agreed to be bought by Facebook, but their sales numbers have continued climbing regardless. The virtual reality company told TechCrunch that they have sold more than 85,000 Oculus Rift development kits.
Of those sales, 25,000 are the newest dev kit iteration of the Rift (the DK2 that was revealed at GDC), which first was available for pre-order on March 19. That's in impressive number in so short a time, and the rest of the sales are of the original DK1 units. The DK2 sells for $350, and has various improvements over the first iteration.
Oculus announced last month that it needed to temporarily hold the sale of development kits, as they had run out of supplies to make them due to high demand. Oculus stated that they never expected to sell as many units as they had, and needed to find an alternative to acquiring parts.
The sale of Oculus and its technologies to Facebook for $2 billion has been a polarizing topic. Those who feel the most hard-done by are those who funded the Rift on Kickstarter and now feel like they were nothing more than early-round investors used to drive up the valuation of Oculus. They were never entitled to anything more than their development kits, though, which they received. I wrote about the sale not being a negative, and Facebook released a statement defending their purchase and promising they will do great things with the technology, a stance supported by well-known Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski.
Supporters of Rift feel that Oculus "sold out" and "betrayed" their fanbase, and that Facebook will not see gaming uses as a priority for the device. Some of the ideas put forth by Bleszinski show that this could be true--there are many applications Facebook could use Rift for--but that shouldn't lead to the assumption that they will abandon gaming.
Publishers and developers will still want to make games for the Oculus Rift, especially if the device becomes ubiquitous. These strong development kit sales indicate future success (and it's not even close to full retail sale), so this should be an interesting topic to watch moving forward.
