Oculus Rift units are still appearing in batches across third-party retailers, and eager Amazon customers may now be able to get their hands on one faster than their pre-order through the official site will allow.
The Rift is back in stock at the US branch of Amazon. The device retains the MSRP of $599, but you may want to lay down an order all the same; anyone that chooses one-day delivery at the checkout within the next 3 hours will be able to get one by tomorrow. That is if Amazon’s stock of units is still available in that space of time – I’m writing this as fast as possible just to make sure they’re still there when you read this.
Rift has been subject to a host of shipping issues since its official ‘launch’ back at the end of March. Ordering through Oculus VR’s own site currently nets you an estimated shipping window of August 2016, meaning you’ll have at least a 30 day wait from here to finally get your kit. We’re hoping that by August all of these issues will have indeed been sorted out and you’ll be able to order a unit and have it delivered in no time.
Third-party deals to get Rift to other retailers, however, haven’t played out exactly as Oculus will have hoped. While the company struggled to fulfil orders to even those that were due a free unit after backing the Rift’s 2012 Kickstarter campaign, a small number of units went out to physical Best Buy locations, and Oculus even offered pre-order customers a chance to jump the queue in a way and have their online pre-order cancelled if they managed to pick one up.
It’s been an unfortunate period and far from ideal for the company, especially when HTC rubbed salt in the wound a few weeks back by announcing that Rift rival, the HTC Vive, would now ship within two – three days of being ordered. Hopefully we’re about ready to put all of this behind us now.
