Update: A spokesperson for Oculus has sent us an official statement regarding the delays:
“The component shortage impacted our quantities more than we expected, and we’ve updated the shipment window to reflect these changes. We apologize for the delay.We’re delivering Rifts to customers every day, and we’re focused on getting Rifts out the door as fast as we can. We’ve taken steps to address the component shortage, and we’ll continue shipping in higher volumes each week. We’ve also increased our manufacturing capacity to allow us to deliver in higher quantities, faster. Many Rifts will ship less than four weeks from original estimates, and we hope to beat the new estimates we’ve provided.”
Original post follows: The main intent for being the first to order an Oculus Rift was the assumption that they’d arrive in a timely manner soon after it came out. But it’s recently been reported that early orders for the Rift are delayed until June for many customers.
A thread on the Oculus subreddit is collecting user reports for shipping estimates, and many comments indicate a June estimate.
Just checked my order and I now have an estimated ship date : Estimated Ship Date.
.6/13/2016 – 6/23/2016. The only thing that gives me any comfort for the 2 month wait is that hopefully most of the issues will be ironed out by then. (xx33xxx 1hr 40mins after orders started)
To get a sense of the length of time that has passed – March 28 of this year was when the Oculus Rift released a final product for the first time, after years of development. People who followed the Oculus story from it’s initial crowdfunding campaign were among the first in line to preorder when the option became available on January 6th.
This news was foreshadowed a few weeks ago, when customers received an email from Oculus warning them that delays were coming.
We’re working hard to get up-to-date ship windows, and you should expect to see your order status updated on oculus.com by Tuesday, April 12th.
This initial email did not indicate that orders would be delayed until June. Boogie2988 wasn’t exempt from this either, according to a recent tweet from him.
Holy shit my
@oculus just got a shipping delay. I won’t get it til JUNE. You’re kidding me.
With the Vive and Gear VR posing as competition to Oculus Rift, it looks like the competition just heated up. Certainly, future virtual reality companies will use this as an example of how things can go wrong when launching their product.
