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Oculus Suspends Oculus Rift Dev Kit Sales In China
An anonymous reader writes with news about how Oculus is dealing with the reselling of dev kits in China. Bad news for those of you looking to get your hands on a preorder of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. A representative from Oculus recently confirmed that the company has had to stop selling its headsets in China as a result of an undisclosed amount of reselling. Which is to say, some of those preordering the developer edition of the virtual reality headset in China — not the consumer product, which hasn't been officially released in any capacity just yet — aren't actually looking to develop anything on the headsets. Nor are they even interested in getting a first look at the virtual reality capabilities of the $350 development kit. They're scalping, plain and simple, to take advantage of what appears to be a hefty amount of demand for the device.
On Reddit 3 Days Ago... come on /.
I give it five days...
Not like oculus lost anything. In fact they are missing out on potential demand
No! No?! I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!
Wouldn't that make trying to scalp them prohibitively inconvenient?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Time for #cardboard to get resold.
All the more market share that will go to Google Cardboard instead!
All I gather from this is that the Chinese have created a free market economy for this good: when supply is limited, but demand is great, then the price must rise.
And I further gather that the Americans in this case do not understand how a free market economy works, as they are striving to put an end to the very natural economic practice of resale.
This is somewhat ironic, of course, given how America is often claimed to be a bastion of free enterprise, while China is often said to have a heavily controlled economy.
Kill your self.
Not selling it directly if price is being uncontrollably inflated is great strategy if they want to keep this product popular, especially in China. It was pretty obvious Chinese public would scourge the earth for these in order to start reverse engineering it in a country with poor IP legislation (especially for foreign IP), but the real problem Oculus would face with this Rift "black market" is marketing itself, as the product would immediately get the exclusive, overpriced label that a developing countries loves to hate. And the Asian market is no small piece of the pie for the paying gaming industry.
So what you're saying is that the free market is just an algorithm which isn't always optimal?
Or are you making some sort of religious zealot ideological argument which assumes that everything which happens to select this algorithm is good?
Or is it the Chinese are better at it than you?
Shut your yap you pinko commie bastard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebBxaWq10Gw
What do you expect from a country whose entire population came about through rape? What is called 'China' today, used to be a WHITE country. Watch the video.
What's the big deal? It's not like the chinese are even human, no great loss IMO.
Wow, the crazies are out in force today aren't they... go take your meds.
Why bring politics to a much more complex topic. This is not about liberalization of this good. It's not a good yet, it hasn't been released. It's not even an essential good. They are issuing developer editions for genuinely interested developers who will make the device popular with new content.
If you get a free market for these controlled sales, you will end up with gaming enthusiasts or knock-off reverse-engineers rather than real contributors getting the item, and companies know better than to buy an overpriced SDK: product won't sell if developers don't get easy access.
And from what I know, America is far from being "a bastion of free enterprise" mate: they sell iPhones through selected carriers, they won't allow companies to sell cars directly to consumers (Tesla), and they are one of the most import-afraid economies around - there's no other country where "Made in this country" is such a strong compelling argument. They don't like free markets, they like controlled markets, for whatever good or bad that may bring
I'm losing hope we'll ever get a first-person tentacle-on-schoolgirl simulator.
There's nothing wrong with "scalping, plain and simple." It's just a secondary market for goods - the very kind we like when we talk about books or music. You have a right to resell things.
If there's a very active secondary market for something, that suggests people are having a hard time getting it from the primary source, or there's just not enough to go around to everyone who wants one, so a higher market price forms. It encourages people who have one to sell it for the new, higher price (increasing supply); and it ensures that those who most urgently want one can get one if they so choose.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
It just goes to show you that if you have a good tech idea the big guys will not hesitate to kick your ass and take your business away from you. Although Oculus probably drew negative attention to its self by being bought out by Facebook.
I'll gust grab one from work.
I realize they have the right to stop selling anything to anyone at any time for any reason, but I'm struggling to figure out what their beef with this is. They should simple alter the dev kit product so that it is virtually impossible to not spot the difference between it and the actual product. This way the resellers will be prevented from claiming the device is the genuine article. Otherwise, what's the problem? Someone else making money off your product? Did Steve Jobs come out of the grave and buy this company? Am I being an asshole or is this just more anti-Chinese xenophobic garbage in the US media and amongst decision makers here? So what if I decide I want to do that, from Colorado? What are you going to do, sue me? I buy it, it's my property. It doesn't quite matter why I buy it, or for what purpose I buy it. Then I have the right to sell it. For whatever price I value it at that you are willing to pay. Is this not the way capitalism is supposed to work? I'm not going to pretend it does work, I'm just asking, did I get that part right?
Nothing new, this is just the modus operandi here in China. Anything, iPad, iPhones, tickets for concerts, movies, anything that has limited availability and a chance for slightly higher than usual demand gets scalped - even if it means ordering lots of stuff from overseas or smuggling things, like iPhones, from Hong Kong.
The Occulus folks are just doing the same that Apple is doing - finding a way to ensure that the product falls into the hands of people who will actually use it. In HK it took them a couple of measures to ensure that HK residents get hands on the iPhone first, over scalpers coming for a day trip from the mainland.
WTF? Are you retarded or just plain stupid?
You are ignoring things like asymmetric risk. If I buy a kit and cannot sell it for more than I paid for it, I can return it*. If Oculus Rift builds more dev kits than people are willing to buy, they can't just go back to the component manufacturers and say, "I bought too many of these, please give me back my money". So no, it's not "capitalism", if it were pure capitalism then we wouldn't have any consumer protection laws and they couldn't return any un-used merchandise(which would probably put the kibosh on these kinds of shenanigans but at a cost that isn't worth it).
I'm assuming there is a return policy, laws in most countries would probably support the consumer if they tried to return an unopened product in a reasonable time window.
Monstar L
why cant the Chinese abide by one single contract they agreed to?
laws in most countries would probably support the consumer if they tried to return an unopened product in a reasonable time window.
At least here in the UK there is a lot of protection for consumers but far less protection for people buying stuff for buisness reasons. The tricky bit of course is distinguishing real consumers from failed scalpers fraudulantly claiming to be consumers.
no idea if the same applies in other countries.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The only thing about this article that shocks me is the fact that the sellers were naive or ignorant of the fact that this is obviously going to happen, as it has with every device available in any market. There are many Chinese (especially students) who live abroad and have 'side-businesses' where they open up taobao stores and sell 'import goods' which are local purchases for them, they'll get you whatever you want from domestic western/1st world markets and mail them to you in China..
Wont be surprised to see Uculus Roft selling before Oculus Rift.
He might also be one of those religious nutjobs who thinks the world is only a few thousand years old and that white people predate Asian people.
Its hard to work out what the issue is. :)
China will see the product in the same way it saw 4k displays at 30 and 60 Hz. A flood of new VR products at a working class price point to meet market demands will be in shops globally.
Some will have Windows, Mac and Linux support, others will be more driver and OS bound.
So in time you will be able to find some great made in China VR products at various price points with interesting hardware support for your VR needs via brands from China.
No need of think about the past, just think of the VR fun, dev support and product selection from China.
China will do what most nations do, route around any issues and get back to sales of their own products.
Compatible headsets for all, just not from one brand at the expected price point
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
All Oculus would have to do is to lock the hardware so it only works on the
developer's account who originally ordered it (a bit of a DRM layer in the driver
and/or SDK software, specific to the Dev kits). Problem solved. Transfer of
ownership would require mailing in some kind of form to the company (make
it a bit of a hassle)
Instead they choose to lock out an entire market.
Christian
If they're taking money for it and selling it openly to the public then it's been released, it doesn't matter that the technology is labelled as being 'for development'. Were they to restricting sale to people who qualified as a developer in some way then maybe, but as it is most of these are finding their way into the hands of people who use them to play HL2, another couple of games, and then take up some space in the wardrobe.
Dev companies won't care too much, they'll take the $120 hit on a device if it's something they're going to make a lot more from. Getting the paperwork sorted to buy them may be more hassle, but most will do it.
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What's wrong with reselling is that it leaves revenue on the table for artists/entrepreneurs, instead giving it to those who add zero value. With a high demand product, a consumer-friendly price is taken advantage of by scalpers and consumers end up getting screwed, because the money they pay above retail doesn't support the product. I really wish products like this in high demand (also game consoles and general admission tickets) could be auctioned until they shipped (or the day before the show) so the actual value of of the product is collected by those who produce it and will support future investment into it. Oculus could have a leader board of sorts, showing the price needed to get in on the next shipment, and once you're auctioning to determine the value of a product, you're already determining the market value and significantly increasing the risk for scalpers to not recoup their expenses.
"This is considered plagiarism."
what's the big deal? It's not like the average American is intelligent , no great loss.
Cartman figured it out in South Park as well... It became a fad as I recall...
Yup... you know why? Because the Rift is practically a finished product. Now it's just coming down to who gets the product first. It could've been released with the first dev kit on a normal release cycle, but instead they've been holding it over people for half a decade. Sure it would've been buggy, but it's definitely getting fixed and being improved on. Now they're on gen like five and have pretty much a finished product and they're still releasing it as a dev kit.
There is a point at which you're actually hurting yourself and those that want to use your product by not releasing it in a timely manner or releasing it in very limited quantities. The very fact that there is a giant resale market indicates people want this as a product so badly they'll throw absurd amounts of money at it. I already thought about purchasing a dev kit just to resell it because I know there is demand for it.
For all the brains Oculus has and all the doctorates their employees possess, they still act completely retarded when it comes to supply and demand. It doesn't matter if the product isn't 100%, it doesn't need to be and what is 100% anyway?
Just ask Bandai. Scalpers bought up all the Action Figures for their Gundam Seed TV show in America. At one point a figure with an msrp of $15 was going for $150 on ebay and at the big action figure scalper sites.
Thing is, Gundam is a giant robot show, and the toys are a major part of what draws fandom in and gets buzz. Nobody could get the toys without paying 5x-10x msrp. Heck, I didn't even know Bandai had put the show out until I saw some of the toys at the old KB Toy Store for $3 a piece after it had finished bombing and Bandai dumped the remaining stock.
Oh, and if you're in a band and your show gets scalped you might sell 10000 tickets and only 1000 people show up. Thing is, you were planning to sell the other 9,000 ppl who showed up CDs and T-Shirts.
So yeah, scalping hurts. Lots. It's a much more complicated issue than "Just a secondary Market"
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There is no way sales in China are "ALREADY EXPLODING!".
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.