Except they are not targeting devs. They are just selling a limited number of devices too cheaply. That neither targets devs nor provides development funds for themselves. There's nothing about selling-low that prevents "rich folks" buying a toy. Essentially whether a dev, a rich toy buyer or a tech collector gets a unit is a matter of first-come-first-served.
I dunno man. It seems pretty clear they are trying to target developers. Its in big text on the site, and much of the content provided (Such as the unity trial license and the like) would be meaningless to non devs. For everyone else , its pretty much just a tech demo at this stage.
But whilst the cheaper price wont stop the richer non-devs from buying in, at least keeping it cheap somewhat levels the playijng field allowing a wider scope of devs.
More to the point, now that Occulus is highly capitalized via its facebook deal, its quite capable of ramping up production to meet demand at its price, BUT, it seems to me occulus dont seem to want its products in wide use yet , probably to protect their reputation whilst its still in development. If they just wanted cash, they could simply produce more.
Shutting off china probably is in the scheme of things shooting themselves in the foot (China , after all is a huge market), I'm not sure how occulus can protect its target group here. It needs developers to ensure a broad range of launch products or its product will fail, but if third parties force the prices out of garage developer reach, then its all in vain.
[Sounds like your Eve team suffered the tragedy of the commons. Your manufacturers wanted to be part of a team for their benefit, preferentially profited from that membership compared to other members, but didn't want to pay proportionally more to defend the team. This is why real world "teams" end up with governments and taxes.]
Right. It did eventually become difficult to stop relisters because of the way eve works, so eventually a system dubbed "space communism" came into play where the team nationalized moons and asteroid belts and leased them out to miners for a fee, and then took a 20% tax on production. With the somewhat extensive income, the team then started supplying free ships to new players to bootstrap them to a point they could get financially independent, and ship reimbursments for the troops (ie, if you die in battle, and it wasn't stupidity induced, your ship is replaced). In the cases of the all important capitals and supercapitals the team moved to a policy of centrally managed fleet (manufacturers could only sell to the team leadership which in turn would loan them to its capital fleet). All of which led to hilarious drama when one of the directors decided to one day run off with the titan and the entire capital fleet reserve. Its a pretty goddamn interesting game if your interested in a simulation of an idealized wartime economy.