First Gen Oculus Rift Dev Kit Sells 60,000 Units in a Year - Already Enough to Reach an Audience of Millions

"Oculus VR sold 60,000 copies of its first development kit, which began shipping during last year’s Game Developers Conference," the New York Times notes, which is an impressive number worth noting here. I'm pleasantly suprised the VR company could move 60K units of a hardware peripheral selling for $350 or more, because it's a very solid data point suggesting there is a mass market for a cheaper consumer model. It's also a very large base of early adopters who are already starting to reach a mass audience for the technology. If we assume each Oculus Rift dev kit owner has given a hands-on demo of the device to an average of 35 people they know (friends, family, co-workers, etc.), that's well over 2 million people who have already had first-hand experience with virtual reality before it's even officially hit the market.

And that's just the first generation dev kit -- the new, enhanced version, just announced last week, should sell at least as many units if not many more. Here's the video:

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Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

Ya'll should rename this blog to "Oculus Rift Notes and News".

If we just shifted the fashion topics over to a discussion of whether Oculus of Glass looks better in 'geek-chic' it'd be done coverage wise.

[Laurence Simon]

"If we assume each Oculus Rift dev kit owner has given a hands-on demo of the device to an average of 35 people they know..."

35? How did you settle on that number?
Let's have ourselves a survey:

OPEN QUESTION: All those of you with Oculus Rift devkits... how many others have you shown these things to?

-ls/cm

[Botgirl Questi]

There've been about 10 million units of the new XBOX and Playstation. So I think it's reasonable to project that VR headsets, including Oculus Rift, could sell more than a million units if they just captured 10% of the gaming market. That seems very doable.

[Ms. CC Creeggan (CronoCloud Creeggan)]

Sighs. All this fuss over the Oculus is just a bunch of Technorati falling for Valleywag hype over the VR they've been dreaming about. They really really want it, so are willing to ignore the practicalities.

The thing being that the Oculus doesn't work well with standard UI paradigms and thusly is an extra expense..alongside a monitor. Do you think all those Facebooking moms are going to run out and get one? Do you think I want to wear a heavy head mounted display for marathon gaming sessions, let alone the fact that many people can't tolerate the thing for more than a half hour.

After all the already existing 3D blu-ray/games via LCD glasses hasn't exactly taken off.

[Ajax Manatiso]

How many people even know 35 people? Anyway, this whole thing reminds of the Segway and how every single family in America will own one by the year 2005. Most people won't even wear a hat when its -10, I doubt they will put on the geek hat.