• Oculus hits Best Buy and others before pre-orders fulfilled
    39 replies, posted
[URL="http://archive.is/sKyta"]http://archive.is/sKyta[/URL] [QUOTE]Curious about virtual reality? You'll be able to get a demo of the retail Oculus Rift at 48 Best Buy locations starting on May 7, with more locations coming later in the summer. You'll even be able to go online, see what stores are participating and schedule your demo up to a month in advance. Here's the kicker: You'll also be able to buy the hardware in-store, even before all the pre-order customers receive their Rifts. "A small number of Rifts will be available for purchase at select Best Buy stores starting May 7 and online from Microsoft and Amazon, starting May 6 at 9 a.m. PST," Oculus' blog post states. "Quantities will be extremely limited while we catch up on Rift pre-orders." You can, in fact, perhaps wait in line, buy the hardware at retail, and then cancel your pre-order. Oculus is planning on some customers doing exactly that.[/quote]
Oculus continues to have horrible ideas
"A small number of Rifts will be available for purchase" Rumor has it that these 48 stores will have at most 5 Rifts each. Don't bother lining up outside overnight when it only amounts to 240 total being sold. [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4htxps/rumor_mill_from_best_buy_phone_calls_is_that_each/[/url]
They still should have fulfilled preorders first [editline]4th May 2016[/editline] Otherwise it just feels like a horrible cashgrab
I'm one of the few who have actually revived theirs... More than a month late.
That's not a lot being sold...
What's really confusing is how they are distributing the stores where you can try out the rift. There are no stores doing this in Boston but they have 4 stores doing this within 50 miles of NYC.
Canada is not part of that scenario either...
Just to add onto this, they recently had bundled computer and occulus packages from bestbuy. The only thing is, that you could cancel the computer half of the bundled, get just the occulus, and it would ship almost immediately. All this while people with pre-orders, some even within 30 minutes of pre-orders coming online, are still waiting for theirs.
[QUOTE]You can, in fact, perhaps wait in line, buy the hardware at retail, and then cancel your pre-order. Oculus is planning on some customers doing exactly that.[/QUOTE] seems fine to me
[QUOTE=meppers;50256124]seems fine to me[/QUOTE] Or they, you know, could have fulfilled their existing obligations instead of going out for more money.
I understand them - 240 units is not a lot, and if it helps expose VR to the general public, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. Still, kinda looks bad when they haven't fulfilled pre-orders, but I doubt Facebook is hurting for money.
[QUOTE=Map in a box;50255826]Otherwise it just feels like a horrible cashgrab[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Map in a box;50256127]Or they, you know, could have fulfilled their existing obligations instead of going out for more money.[/QUOTE] If Best Buy contracted with Oculus during pre-orders to receive a certain number of units, then that is an existing obligation that they need to fulfill alongside 'regular' pre-orders, and I have a hard time calling that a 'cash grab' or 'going out for more money'.
Anyone know how long I'd be waiting if I ordered a HTC Vive now? Still gonna be waiting at least a month for my Rift according to their website.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;50256189]I understand them - 240 units is not a lot, and if it helps expose VR to the general public, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. Still, kinda looks bad when they haven't fulfilled pre-orders, but I doubt Facebook is hurting for money.[/QUOTE] No but I'm sure it makes them a ton of money and having rifts at all bestbuy locations as a way to test VR would do better at exposing VR to the public than selling the units before preorders fulfilled. [QUOTE=catbarf;50256197]If Best Buy contracted with Oculus during pre-orders to receive a certain number of units, then that is an existing obligation that they need to fulfill alongside 'regular' pre-orders, and I have a hard time calling that a 'cash grab' or 'going out for more money'.[/QUOTE] Just furthers my point -- why would they sign a contract knowing that they'd probably be unable to fulfill the preorders?
[QUOTE=Map in a box;50256259]Just furthers my point -- why would they sign a contract knowing that they'd probably be unable to fulfill the preorders?[/QUOTE] Because they didn't know they wouldn't be able to fulfill pre-orders. These contracts have almost certainly been in place for some time, and their component shortage issues cropped up late into production.
Oculus has tons of resources to do research and in fact did an AMA, no? So its not like they were out of the loop.
[QUOTE=Xubs;50256349]We don't actually know when Best Buy and Oculus signed a contract together, but I think it's incredibly likely it would've occurred sometime long before preorders went up. Best Buy is always interested in getting new tech for show room deals, especially screen and display technology. The contract has more than likely been around for awhile, these things don't just sign themselves out of thin air. Meanwhile, when preorders actually went up, they said they were overwhelmed with the amount of orders being placed. It's easy to blame them for this as an outsider such as you or me when you have access to forums and friends to gauge public interest, but Oculus doesn't have that. They have a very different set of data to go off of, and they assuredly underestimated based on that data. It's not uncommon to do so with popular products, it happens often enough. Especially when you factor in component shortages like what Oculus has been hit with. So if we assume the first is correct and apply it to the second, what is Oculus actually supposed to do about it? They can't just ignore contracts, that's incredibly bad for business. Far worse for business than some clogged preorders, a common problem in the preorder world.[/QUOTE] Oculus/Facebook should have realized that the amount of preorders was going to be huge. The Rift was pretty much synonymous with VR for a few years. Facebook is swimming in money, why not outfit a few more factories and reduce the waiting time?
[QUOTE=Svinnik;50256396]Oculus/Facebook should have realized that the amount of preorders was going to be huge. The Rift was pretty much synonymous with VR for a few years. Facebook is swimming in money, why not outfit a few more factories and reduce the waiting time?[/QUOTE] I don't think people realize how carefully they try and plan these things out (Large businesses), and that even with careful planning things can't go perfectly
[QUOTE=Svinnik;50256396]Oculus/Facebook should have realized that the amount of preorders was going to be huge. The Rift was pretty much synonymous with VR for a few years. Facebook is swimming in money, why not outfit a few more factories and reduce the waiting time?[/QUOTE] There's only so many companies out there that create the parts that they're short of (speculated to be either the custom Fresnel lenses or screens from Samsung, which the Vive is also using [but not the same model]). You can't just expect them to dump money to fix this problem especially since it's not Oculus themselves manufacturing these parts. That said, Oculus was originaly cruising along slowly before Valve (or HTC rather) faked them out HARD in pushing things up the pipeline by saying they were going to release soon. Someone up above Oculus decided that they needed to match them and probably ended up with this mess.
[QUOTE=Xubs;50256455] I will say though, that "opening more factories" is definitely not an end-all-be-all solution. It takes a lot of time to outfit a factory for production. However long it takes to open up several factories would be too long for this whole thing to get solved in time. By the time those factories are operatingthis problem would be over by that point.[/QUOTE] I meant open more factories for production then, not now. Now it's too late but the point about the parts was something I didn't consider.
[QUOTE=Svinnik;50256543]I meant open more factories for production then, not now.[/QUOTE] 'Then' would have been at least a year ago (probably closer to two) for a full-scale hardware manufacturing operation, not a couple of months ago when the pre-orders started coming in. Oculus was not prepared for the number of pre-orders, and despite trying to meet demand ran into parts shortages from manufacturers. This happens to even the most organized companies so I'm hesitant to label it mismanagement.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;50256189]I understand them - 240 units is not a lot, and if it helps expose VR to the general public, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. Still, kinda looks bad when they haven't fulfilled pre-orders, but I doubt Facebook is hurting for money.[/QUOTE] Didn't they say they could make ~100 units per day? That's 2.5 days of production for that amount of units if so.
VR so far seems like a complete fuck up. Going to wait until gen 2
[QUOTE=Svinnik;50256543]I meant open more factories for production then, not now. Now it's too late but the point about the parts was something I didn't consider.[/QUOTE] hindsight is always 20/20
[QUOTE=redBadger;50256765]VR so far seems like a complete fuck up. Going to wait until gen 2[/QUOTE] In what way is the Vive a fuckup
Vive has its issues but not to the point I'd consider it being a fuckup. The state of VR as a whole though is kinda a disaster -- not singling out devices.
I have a Vive and I can say it's an absolute game changer
[QUOTE=Map in a box;50256940]Vive has its issues but not to the point I'd consider it being a fuckup. The state of VR as a whole though is kinda a disaster -- not singling out devices.[/QUOTE] Why is it a disaster? do you own any of these devices? I own a Vive and have an Oculus on pre-order, and I can't wait for the future games to come out because the Vive is pretty fucking awesome.
I'm not talking about the devices themselves, there's just a lot that could be handled better in general but the devices are pretty amazing themselves.
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