In an interview with the Wired UK, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe alluded to the kind of lifecycle we can expect with the consumer Oculus Rift.
The Oculus Rift is here – or it will be soon. But how long will the hardware VR enthusiasts have waited so long to own remain current?
In an interview with Wired.co.uk, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe reflected on many things; from Facebook’s acquisition swelling the company’s ranks by “..several hundred percent” and taking the company from “…startup to a worldwide leading tech company”, to Rift developer kit success, “We’ve got 180,000 developer kits out there in the world. I don’t think there’s ever been a hardware project where that many developer kits have been given out before launch.”
But one of the more interesting comments for prospective Oculus Rift buyers was Iribe alluding to the Rift’s potential lifecycle once it reaches market in Q1 next year. “The product cycle for the Oculus Rift will be between the rapid six-month cycle of cell-phones and the slower seven-year cycle of consoles.” says Iribe. “I think you can imagine every few years being the usual cadence. We will have prototypes in-between so we’ll have a new demo or prototype or dev kit to show every year.”
Oculus have always maintained that virtual reality will evolve rapidly, and by definition hardware iteration is a large part of driving that evolution – which by extension means new products must make it to market in fairly rapid succession. But I’ve not heard anyone at Oculus state so clearly the pattern of hardware releases going forward, in particular the iteration of new dev kits into the wild every 1-2 years.
Before any VR enthusiasts on a budget panic however, Iribe went on to clarify what these comments mean at retail; “That’s not the same as saying we’ll have a customer product to show every year but we’ll have new tech to show.”
You can catch the full interview over at Wired UK right here.