Tundra Labs celebrated success back in March as Tundra Tracker, the company’s SteamVR-based tracker device, not only exploded past its Kickstarter goal in less than 24 hours, but went on to pass the $1 million mark. It’s proved to be so popular that it’s actually become a victim of its own success, as the company has drastically limited future orders through Kickstarter.
Back in late April, Tundra Labs founder Luke Beno announced that, due to supply limitations caused by ongoing global manufacturing disruptions, the company would need to put an upper limit on the number of Tundra Trackers it could sell. Now the company says it’s reached that limit with a majority of its hardware bundles.
Reward tiers featuring Super Wireless (SW) dongles ‘SW3’ and ‘SW7’ have “hit the limits,” Tundra Labs collaborator Jason Leong says in a tweet, leaving only bundles with the ‘SW5’ model available to purchase. The SW USB dongle is used to connect a variable number of trackers to the user’s computer: 3, 5, and 7 trackers respectively.
SteamVR trackers like Tundra Tracker are exclusively used with the SteamVR headset and motion controller tracking standard, which was first created by Valve in partnership with HTC. Like HTC’s Vive Trackers, Tundra Tracker has the ability to track body movement such as the feet, knees, elbows, and the waist, however it’s noteworthy for its small relative size.
At the time of this writing, the only way to buy multiple Tundra Trackers now is to purchase a single tracker (either $95 without dongle, and $130 with) and then add a second tracker for $89 upon checkout. All other multiple tracker bundles are now sold out.
Many companies have faced similar supply issues throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, which is in large part due to a shortage in chips. Manufacturers of smartphones, cars, graphics cards—essentially anything with a microprocessor—are being affected currently. It’s possible the shortage could last into 2023, so with such uncertainty it makes sense why Tundra Labs wouldn’t put the cart before the horse and take orders it may not be able to fulfill.
Update (10:00 AM ET): A brief explanation was added above to clarify the function of SteamVR trackers in general.