Facebook says Oculus Rift S headsets “generally” won’t be replenished as they disappear from store shelves, marking the end of the virtual reality system’s life span. As UploadVR reported yesterday, Facebook has confirmed that “generally speaking, as channels sell out of stock, they won’t be replenished moving forward.” The PC-tethered headset is unavailable through Oculus’ store, and it’s out of stock on retail platforms like Amazon and Walmart in the US, except from third-party sellers.
Facebook announced last year that it would discontinue the Oculus Rift S in 2021. While the headset was a successor to the landmark Oculus Rift, it compromised on features like screen resolution and refresh rate, particularly compared to high-end PC-based competitors like the Valve Index. Meanwhile, Facebook shifted its focus to the self-contained Oculus Quest, a mobile headset that can also be plugged into a desktop PC — making it functionally a replacement for the Rift S.
According to some reports, that strategy was a marked departure from Oculus’ earlier plans. Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe left the company in 2018, reportedly after Facebook canceled a higher-end “Rift 2” headset. Also-departed Oculus founder Palmer Luckey alluded to that rumor on Twitter today, saying he was “imagining a world where Rift 2 was not cancelled shortly before going into production and then cancelled again in favor of a much lower spec Lenovo rebadge.” (The Oculus Rift S was produced in partnership with Lenovo.)
Moving to standalone designs, though, has apparently worked well for Facebook so far. Facebook says last year’s Oculus Quest 2 has outsold all previous Oculus headsets combined. The device has established Facebook as the dominant VR headset company at the price of ceding high-end PC-based VR to competitors including Valve, HTC, and HP. And Facebook has indicated that it’s continuing the Quest line for the near future — with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying he’s already imagining “Quest 3 and 4” headsets.