Oculus apologised for the Oculus Rift launch delays in the 2 April and offered free shipping to those affected. The delays were down to a component shortage but it doesn’t appear the situation is getting any better.
This morning pre-order customers received another email with new estimated shipping dates. It appears that the component shortage was a slight understatement as some customers have discovered their orders could be delayed for a further two weeks after their initial expected date.Pre-order customers who got in early are now having to wait up to two months after the launch to receive their Rift.
This is not good news for Oculus as we’re seeing more customers cancel their orders. This is good news for HTC as customers jump ship to the other side.
Although these emails have gone out, there’s appears to be some inaccuracy with some of the expected delivery dates and Oculus are being slightly conservative with the dates. Some customers are discovering their orders will be with them five days prior to Oculus’ stated delivery date.
Not all Kickstarter backers have received their Rift yet and Oculus support has decided to change their order history status to avoid any confusion.
“Kickstarter Backers, we’re changing your Order History to show “TBD” instead of the date as that date was applicable to the time in which we imported the orders. We’ve already fulfilled a large number of the orders and more are being fulfilled on a regular cadence. Your Rifts are from a different allocation.”
Anyone who was late to the pre-order party had an expected delivery date of July but anyone ordering from today will now have to wait until August to receive a Rift.
There has been so much hype around VR for the past twelve months that the delays have frustrated early adopters and this Oculus Rift “component shortage” is only making things worse.
Update: Following this morning’s emails, Oculus has issued the following statement:
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”
