The first few early Kickstarter backer have begun receiving their Oculus Rift Development kits. We collate initial impressions and early arrival screenshots. As if that weren’t enough, Oculus has finally opened the virtual doors to it’s online Developer’s Area, we take a peek.
“OMFG, it’s happening!”
..were the understandably hyperbolic words making up the title of a Reddit post that appeared this morning at around 9am PDT. The post had just a single image, that of the now familiar Oculus Rift Development shipping carton:
Predictably there followed an explosion of friendly name-calling and fervent interest in what seemed to be the very first confirmed arrival of the Oculus Rift Development kits. Jayoh was one of the 250 people to choose an Unassembled Kit as his reward for backing the Kickstarter Project back in August 2012.
unboxing now, i was order 224, one of the first 100 “unassembled kits”
i’m in the usa, indiana actually.
As the day rolled on, it became clear Jayoh was not to be the only lucky recipient of one of the most hotly anticipated pieces of gaming technology in recent memory. Judging by the markings on the box, seemingly noting batch numbers (xxx/xxx – in Jayoh’s case 170/300) which does seem to indicate, at least in this case, that 300 Development Kits were shipped in one day.
This seems to tally with estimates from a recent Oculus update, stating that they hoped to ship around 1000-1500 units per week. Although the most recent statement from Oculus said that shipments would begin on the 29th March.
Later, another official update email from Oculus to backers went out, which confirmed that they had been shipping since Wednesday:
Rejoice fellow VR pioneers: the day has finally arrived. Oculus Rift development kits are officially shipping! The very first kits have already started arriving.
We actually started shipping on Wednesday, but we haven’t shared tracking information yet because the team is still tied up at GDC in San Francisco. Sorry about that! This means the earliest backers may actually find Rift’s on their doorsteps before they receive tracking numbers. A little surprise to keep things interesting. This day has been a long time in the making. We’d like to thank you again for your patience, support, and enthusiasm for virtual reality! We couldn’t have gotten here without you.
We hope to have more from some of the early recipients of Dev Kits shortly, stay tuned.
