If you’ve been following the Oculus Rift story closely as we have, you’ll know that it’s an entirely different beast than it once was. Originally Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Rift, expected to sell a limited quantity of DIY self-assembly kits to members of the MTBS3D forums. He intended to hand-build, package, and ship them himself. Indeed he took a number of these pre-Kickstarter orders, but then things blew up when John Carmack showed off the Oculus Rift at E3 2012.
With interest skyrocketing, Palmer realized Kickstarter would be a more sensible option and that he’d have to move to mass-production. To appease the early adopters who wanted to get a DIY s kit, the Kickstarter had a special DIY kit reward tier for $275. This was limited to 100 orders and was sold out just hours after the Kickstarter went live. However, now that mass-production is happening, it’s been unclear exactly what the pre-Kickstarter and limited 100 DIY kit orders would turn out to be. We now have some info concerning the fate of these two legacy orders.
According to a trusted source, Oculus “has not finalized what the pre-Kickstarter guys will be getting. There are several ideas in the pipeline that most people should be thrilled with, and if not, they can get a full refund and put it towards a normal package. Same thing for the self-assembly kits; they will get something beyond a Rift, but I don’t know what all that will be.”
Yes, it’s vague, but it sounds like the legacy order folks will get a little something special.
In a thread dedicated to pre-Kickstarter orders at the MTBS3D forums, some were wondering if Oculus would send them the 40 units from the factory pilot run that Oculus recently completed. Palmer Luckey stopped into the thread and provided a brief update:
[Oculus] are doing something special [for the legacy orders]. We don’t want to send pre-Kickstarter backers any units from the pilot run, since there are a few tiny tweaks that are going into the main manufacturing run. If you want to add more for extra units, refund the difference, refund the whole thing, take what you get, we can do it! Everyone will get taken care of.
Luckey also noted that he would be contacting those who had pre-Kickstarter orders to square everything away once everything is in place.
