Oculus Rift Shipping Begins: First Unit Hand-Delivered by Palmer Luckey
The Oculus Rift will finally be in the hands of consumers as shipping for the virtual reality headset has begun. Founder Palmer Luckey even braved the cold Alaskan weather to personally deliver the very first consumer unit to the very first person who pre-ordered, Ross Martin.
The major moment in consumer VR was captured through Facebook Live (video below). Aside from being a testament of a founder's dedication, the personal delivery can be considered as a celebratory gesture. The stream captured Palmer walking into Martin's office in his signature shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and flip flop. They did a brief unboxing and some chit chat.
"I've been working on this thing for so long, and you're the first person to actually get one," Luckey said in the video (below). "So it's kind of like me taking all of this work and handing it off to you so you've got to make sure you have fun with it or something."
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also congratulated Martin and hoped he would enjoy his Oculus Rift. The Axiom Data Science software developer noticed the mention 12 hours later but told Zuckerberg, he definitely will enjoy his new VR headset.
Martin's unit is the first of many more Oculus Rift VR headsets that are scheduled to arrive Monday, March 28. The Oculus Rift, which costs $599, became available for pre-order in early January. Those who weren't able to place their orders then will have to wait for a few more months. ZDNet reports the second round of orders will be accepted starting July 2016.
The Oculus Rift started as a Kickstarter project in 2012. The company founded by Luckey and Brendan Iribe was acquired by Facebook a couple of years back.
Despite the market's anticipation for Oculus Rift, RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian stated in a note to investors that they expect the VR headset to sell 500,000 to 1 million units this year, which is lower than consensus expectations of 1 to 2 million.
