Oculus Rift Consumer Launch May Not Be This Year, Founder Implies

By Eric Johnson

“We don’t have anything to announce,” Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey said up front at the company’s South by Southwest panel today in Austin, Texas.

But hey, it’s Friday afternoon! There’s nothing else going on, so let’s read some tea leaves.

Luckey was asked about the company’s 2012-Kickstarted project, the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift. Although the Rift is credited with reigniting interest in VR, it’s now one of several headsets headed to market, and is still only available as a developer prototype and lacks a consumer release date.

Luckey copped to having said in the past that something would have to go “horribly wrong” for the Rift to not come out in 2015: “I did say that, before we made a lot of changes to our roadmap,” including ramping up the target quality level of the consumer device and “partnering with Facebook.” The social networking giant bought Oculus nearly a year ago for $2 billion.

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