Oculus VR cancels Chinese DK2 sales due to reselling
July 7, 2014 | 11:26
Companies: #china #oculus-rift #oculus-vr
Oculus VR has confirmed that it has halted sales of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset in China, following the discovery that local companies were purchasing the development kits and selling them on at an inflated mark-up - a move that has legitimate purchasers disappointed.
Oculus VR recently announced that it had begun distribution of the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (DK2), the high-resolution successor to the wildly popular Oculus Rift Development Kit. As the name suggests, the hardware is aimed primarily at developers rather than end-users, but that hasn't stopped the company taking a whopping 45,000 orders since sales opened in March of which only 5,000 have so far been produced.
An unspecified quantity of those 5,000, however, have not found their way to end users. Instead, companies have reportedly been ordering the hardware in bulk under assumed identities in order to resell the devices to an eager consumer base for profit. The problem has been serious enough, in fact, that Oculus VR has taken drastic measures: the closure of sales to China and the cancelling of a number of, but not all, existing pre-orders from Chinese citizens.
'Yes, it is a bummer that we've had to suspend sales in China due to extreme reseller purchases. We need to make sure that we are doing what we can to make sure that resellers that are looking to flip our product for a profit are not taking stock away from legitimate developer purchases globally,' a company representative confirmed in a statement late last week. 'Our product, in its current form, is a developer kit, meant for developers that develop VR content. We are looking into alternative ways to make sure that our development kits are getting into legitimate developer hands in China. If you are an enthusiast, we kindly ask that you wait for the consumer Rift. It will be worth the wait.'
In a comment thread on Reddit, Oculus VR was asked for clarity on the volume of the problem. 'We were forced to suspend an entire country from purchasing,' the reply read. 'I'll let you put two and two together.'
Oculus VR recently announced that it had begun distribution of the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (DK2), the high-resolution successor to the wildly popular Oculus Rift Development Kit. As the name suggests, the hardware is aimed primarily at developers rather than end-users, but that hasn't stopped the company taking a whopping 45,000 orders since sales opened in March of which only 5,000 have so far been produced.
An unspecified quantity of those 5,000, however, have not found their way to end users. Instead, companies have reportedly been ordering the hardware in bulk under assumed identities in order to resell the devices to an eager consumer base for profit. The problem has been serious enough, in fact, that Oculus VR has taken drastic measures: the closure of sales to China and the cancelling of a number of, but not all, existing pre-orders from Chinese citizens.
'Yes, it is a bummer that we've had to suspend sales in China due to extreme reseller purchases. We need to make sure that we are doing what we can to make sure that resellers that are looking to flip our product for a profit are not taking stock away from legitimate developer purchases globally,' a company representative confirmed in a statement late last week. 'Our product, in its current form, is a developer kit, meant for developers that develop VR content. We are looking into alternative ways to make sure that our development kits are getting into legitimate developer hands in China. If you are an enthusiast, we kindly ask that you wait for the consumer Rift. It will be worth the wait.'
In a comment thread on Reddit, Oculus VR was asked for clarity on the volume of the problem. 'We were forced to suspend an entire country from purchasing,' the reply read. 'I'll let you put two and two together.'
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