Oculus VR - "No Second-Hand Support"

[Tom Bombadildo]

In recent news, the Oculus team announced that they were suspending sales in China an attempt to thwart resellers selling their new Dev Kit V2 for higher prices. Now, the Oculus team is going around cancelling Dev Kit V2 preorders for users that have an intent to sell. Along with this, an Oculus VR Community Manager on the OR forums had this to say:

"We found this guy's order and canceled it. We don't allow resale of the development kit," Oculus VR Community Manager cybereality wrote in a forum post. "We also don't provide warranty on second-hand sales, so if you buy on eBay you are on your own."

While this might sound like "bad" news to some, it's entirely understandable since these are Dev kits and not official consumer product, as OR devs have mentioned they're meant for "development" purposes only.

We need to make sure that we are doing what we can to make sure that resellers that are looking to flip our product for a profit are not taking stock away from legitimate developer purchases globally.

Source

 

[Hells Malice]

Good for them. Totally understandable. It's really, really annoying when people order a bunch of something like this with the intent to nickle and dime the same people they probably screwed out of a legitimate purchase.
Like people who go to console launches and buy like 20 consoles just to sell them in front of the store at a premium. It's total BS. (though admittedly not quite the same thing as selling a dev kit)

 

[gokujr1000]

I understand putting people on their own for buying the product second hand, as that is mostly the case for things such as the Playstation or Xbox franchise, but allowing a resale of the dev kit should be allowed as long as it's resold at a lesser price to when the devkit was purchased. Oculus VR could really do a good thing by helping people who don't want the devkit and allowing them to transfer it.

 

[FAST6191]

Boo, by all means consider methods to make resale less attractive but this does not work for me.

 

[Hells Malice]

I understand putting people on their own for buying the product second hand, as that is mostly the case for things such as the Playstation or Xbox franchise, but allowing a resale of the dev kit should be allowed as long as it's resold at a lesser price to when the devkit was purchased. Oculus VR could really do a good thing by helping people who don't want the devkit and allowing them to transfer it.

The only people buying the OR should be devs. It's a dev kit. There's literally no reason a dev should be selling their used OR either.
There is absolutely no such thing as resale at a lower price for a thing like this. No one is going to sell at a loss just to help devs out, that's really not how this world works.
The OR team are doing this so people don't buy all available OR devkits and sell it at a premium, which is what would happen. The only people selling for less would be randoms selling used units.

 

[FAST6191]

The only people buying the OR should be devs. It's a dev kit. There's literally no reason a dev should be selling their used OR either.

Someone got one to test, found it was not fit for task and is now reselling. I can not begin to count the amount of stuff I have done that for -- you can read all the specs sheets you want but hands on counts for so much more.
Someone got one to test, life happened and is now lacking the time to do anything with it.
There are quite a few titles with OR and similar device support added onto it, to that end beta testers could well do with such a device.
OR got purchased by facebook, a philosophical or other objection (or just future predictions of failure) could well be a reason to resell.
OR are hardly the only device on the market, nor even the clear cut best. Flog it on to those that want it, this also goes back to the first if you buy an array of the available tech.
I could go on but my dinner is done so I will leave it there for now.

 

[DinohScene]

Good move Oculus, good move!

 

[Hells Malice]

Someone got one to test, found it was not fit for task and is now reselling. I can not begin to count the amount of stuff I have done that for -- you can read all the specs sheets you want but hands on counts for so much more.
Someone got one to test, life happened and is now lacking the time to do anything with it.
There are quite a few titles with OR and similar device support added onto it, to that end beta testers could well do with such a device.
OR got purchased by facebook, a philosophical or other objection (or just future predictions of failure) could well be a reason to resell.
OR are hardly the only device on the market, nor even the clear cut best. Flog it on to those that want it, this also goes back to the first if you buy an array of the available tech.
I could go on but my dinner is done so I will leave it there for now.

I had my usual bout of trying to understand half the crap you said, but anyway I think I got the point.
You're not making much of one of course, but yeah, I got it. I think.

This is a dev kit. For developers to develop for it. Thus the name "dev kit". Dev is short for developer. I hope that's more clear, because you listed a lot of things I assume were tied to a regular consumer and not a developer.
While it is possible a developer could purchase one and for one reason or another find they don't wish to develop for it, it is much much more likely that chinese resellers will snatch up thousands and resell them for double the cost. It's kind of like when forums and such blanket ban China (and similar countries) to fight spambots. Yeah it sucks you're going to screw with some legitimate people, but you're helping the majority with that small sacrifice.

There is no win/win situation for this, the OR team simply picked the one with the least casualties. There is no obligation to the general consumer, because this is NOT a release for the general consumer. It's a dev kit, a clearly labeled one at that. They've even said so. They are ensuring that developers for the device can get their hands on it for as cheap as they can pump them out. This ensures they can do just that. Even general consumers can still buy the device for themselves and have no problems seeking support. There are very few realistically affected by this. Only cheap asses buying second hand. I can pretty much guarantee anyone who, for whatever reason, needs to sell their OR kit, will still be able to do so. It's no skin off their nose if the guy they sell it to has no warranty.

 

[FAST6191]

snip

It was a list of counters, ones I would not have said were worded in an especially hard to read way (no crazy grammar, double meanings or anything like that), to your claim that only devs would need one and that nobody should be reselling them, both of which I hold are wrong and wrong for very common scenarios in development and otherwise. This was entirely separate to the issue of scalpers/bulk resellers which OR could possibly benefit from frustrating.

To go in a bit more depth

"Someone got one to test, found it was not fit for task and is now reselling. I can not begin to count the amount of stuff I have done that for -- you can read all the specs sheets you want but hands on counts for so much more."

OR is hardly the only "glasses with screens in" product on the market and they face stiff competition that is improving (and may even be superior in various ways*) every day. I tend not to do it for such high end products but there have been plenty of times I have brought in 20 different chips/devices that might be suitable for the task and done a shootout. Sometimes I test to destruction but often enough I use it for the few hours I need, find something is suitable and then find myself left with several kilos or no small amount of money worth of hardware doing nothing. indeed those reselling hardware with them having done similar things is often where I might get my initial samples.

*for the scenario I may only need the glasses with screens in, the controls may be pointless for my purposes and for the money I might be able to get something with better screens in. Alternatively I may need something for a proof of concept and the OR API may allow me to do that more easily which allows me to then get the go ahead to spend the time programming it for a different device.

"Someone got one to test, life happened and is now lacking the time to do anything with it."
I would have thought such a thing is fairly self evident but OK. If there is one thing I do not trust in this world it is an engineer/programmer that does not fiddle with stuff on their own time. However free time is not always the most and if I buy in a toy, suddenly get lumped with a project/job I may well be sitting on something that is only going to go down in value, why I would not flog it on and rebuy later (or move to something else) I am not sure.

"There are quite a few titles with OR and similar device support added onto it, to that end beta testers could well do with such a device."
I like good beta testers and they well worth the price of admission, however they are not typically called devs and as such we have a non dev use for a product.
http://www.riftenabled.com/admin/apps/ has quite a few things they could help in. A scenario in which they get bored of the device is not hard to envision either.

"OR got purchased by facebook, a philosophical or other objection (or just future predictions of failure) could well be a reason to resell."
Companies get purchased all the time, fact of life really and a well known problem in engineering. Facebook's history of purchases and that they frequently nerf things (often for good/understandable reasons but nerfing is still nerfing), or even general philosophical objections, could see the need to sell before it becomes a reality and the price/value drops.


All of these are common scenarios in development and engineering. To go further I could be a buyer for an electronics seller -- it may be a beta/dev kit but a lot can still be found out from one. Likewise even if I am not a dev I might just have enough hardware/programming knowledge to have it useful for my purposes.