Whether you think the Oculus Rift is the next big thing or not, you can’t deny that it’s done stuff with VR that has pushed the entire idea forward quite a bit in the last few years. It still has a way to go to be wildly successful though, and the creator of Facebook (who now own Oculus) thinks that its going to have to shift in fairly large numbers to do so.

He thinks it needs to sell “50 million to 100 million units before it will really be a very meaningful thing as a computing platform. So I do think it’s going to take a bunch of years to get there.” adding that it’ll probably take a few cycles of the device to get it to the point where it is selling in large enough numbers.

He considers the acquisition of Oculus as a long-term investment in the future of technology and computing as well. “Every 10 to 15 years, a new major computing platform arrives and we think that virtual and augmented reality are important parts of this upcoming next platform. This quarter, Oculus continued to make progress towards this vision.”

The consumer beta for Oculus’ second Rift device could be available as soon as April of next year. Already the DK2 development kit has proven popular enough that Oculus has had to stop unscrupulous buyers bulk-buying just to sell them on with a markup.

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