Originally posted on: www.roadtovr.com
Between high demand and manufacturing interruptions due to the Coronavirus, Oculus Quest and Rift S have been in extremely short supply, often commanding a 150% price premiums (or more) in aftermarket sales. Those looking to pick up an Oculus Quest or Rift S may not have to wait too much longer; a global stock check by Road to VR indicates that Quest is largely available with a slight and Rift S has made significant progress on backorders.
We checked stock availability for direct purchases from Oculus.com for Quest (64GB), Quest (128GB), and Rift S across all regions where the headsets are sold.
The latest shows that Quest stock has been holding fairly steady in 16 of 23 regions, though Quest (64GB) is backordered by about two weeks in most regions while Quest (128GB) is less than one week in most regions.
Rift S—which has been far slower to come back into stock than Quest—has finally started seeing fairly steady availability over the last three weeks, albeit with a backorder of about two weeks in most regions.
Unfortunately the UK and US both continue to see sporadic availability of both Quest and Rift S. And when the stock does pop up it’s usually back-ordered by two weeks or more, though this is an improvement compared to June when the backorders of those headsets were closer to a month.
Our guess is that that the disparity between Quest and Rift S availability is related to the fact that Quest is manufactured by Oculus while Rift S is manufactured by Lenovo. It may also have to do with Facebook prioritizing Quest production given especially strong demand for the headset.
All things considered, the current situation is a huge improvement over the second quarter of 2020 when it was largely impossible to order an Oculus headset in any region without resorting to aftermarket sellers charging huge premiums over the MSRP.
Even as stock headset stock direct from Oculus has been catching up, availability from third-party retailers remains bleak.
While earlier in the year the headsets weren’t available from third-parties at all (save for from resellers with jacked up prices), in the last month we’ve started to see sporadic availability of MSRP-priced Quest headsets on sites like Amazon. Quest (128GB) on Amazon US is more often available than Quest (64GB), but even still the site is reporting a backorder of two to four weeks for the 128GB model. On the other hand, we’ve seen almost no availability of Rift S at third-party retailers in the last few months.
Background: Coronavirus Disruption of VR Headset Stock
Facebook announced back in early February that it expected the Coronavirus to impact the availability of its headsets, and shortly thereafter all of the company’s headsets became unavailable in all regions for a long stretch. Shortages prompted the company to begin selling refurbished versions of the original Oculus Rift headset which it had discontinued the year prior.
In late April a Facebook spokesperson told us the following:
“We continue to make products available in all channels as quickly as possible for people to buy. As you’ve noted, Quest and Rift S have been intermittently in stock in some channels and regions. No specific estimate to share on future stock expectations, as the situation remains dynamic.”
The spokesperson said that in regions where headsets are out of stock, customers can use the ‘Notify Me’ option on the buy page for each headset to sign up to be alerted to new stock. Notifications will go out in order of sign-up.
According to the New York Times, China—where Oculus headsets are manufactured—began reopening factories in February. “By some measures, China’s economy is getting back on track. By the end of February, most of its factories and mines had reopened, according to a variety of data, cranking out everything from steel to cellphones at a blistering pace through March. Industrial output rebounded to a near-record level,” Keith Bradsher, the publication’s Shanghai bureau chief, reported in late April.
The availability of Valve’s Index headset has also been substantially impacted by the Coronavirus. Though new orders are still generally back-ordered by eight weeks or more, we recently saw the first signs of Valve starting to catch up on its lengthy backlog.
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