Hope you picked up one of the Oculus Rift dev kits already if you were planing on doing so, because the company is letting people know that sales are going to be suspended. The culprit? Lack of components. They'll sell the rest of their stock as long as they have it but after that, it's over. There's still no word on an official retail release date so this might be your last chance to get it anytime soon.
The unit is still technically unavailable to consumers but the developer's version, which allows you to design your own virtual reality games, has sold over 50,000 units worldwide. The company raised millions from a successful Kickstarter campaign and attracted tons of industry attention, even bringing programming legend John Carmack (of Doom fame) on board as chief technical officer.
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This shortage might be a blessing, since they've shown off a brand new version of the Oculus Rift at CES this year. That "Crystal Cove" version apparently eliminates motion blur with improved screens, adding sensors and a camera in order to track the position of your head and body, allowing you to push in and out of a game by tiling and moving your head. This will be the basis for the second developer kit that's due out soon. The better version will be as close to spec to the Crystal Cove version as possible, perhaps offering 1080p AMOLED displays to really fix the display concerns. There's rumors that the new Dev Kit will hit this summer.
Given that the first Oculus Rift dev kit was offered at a mere $300, many people who had no intentions of ever designing games picked it up just to play the various games and demos other developers are coming out with. After all, it's cheaper than a next-gen system and offers an experience that none of them can match, and developers are already doing amazing things with it. Just the last week saw insane Oculus Rift versions of The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon released, and that's not including all the other games that support it, everything from Team Fortress 2 to the upcoming horror title Daylight.
We'll let you know more about the Oculus Rift's retail release as we hear it. Keep an eye on their official site for more details.
