Update: Oculus apologized and released a statement.
Some of the people who followed Oculus for years and were on the website to pre-order the Rift the second it was available in January already knew their device wouldn’t ship on the first day, March 28. There had still been hope the Rift would be received in April though.
Now, some pre-order holders are finding their devices will ship months later than expected. On the eve of F8, Facebook’s developer conference, Oculus issued an update to its order history website that gives people a window during which they can expect shipment of the Rift. Mine, for instance, won’t ship until mid-June and I had been struggling to place my order on the overwhelmed Oculus website the moment it was possible.
While Oculus sent an email to buyers, Facebook’s VR company has otherwise been notably silent on the matter. Representatives have not responded yet to requests for comment. Here’s the text of the email that was sent:
We’ve updated your Order History with a new shipment window for your Rift.
This window may be later than your original estimate, due to the early component shortage.
As a reminder, we’ll send you an email when we charge the payment method on file for your purchase and prepare your shipment. We’ll also cover all shipping and handling costs for orders placed through 11:59 PDT on April 1, 2016.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to the Oculus Support team if you have any questions. Thank you for supporting the future of virtual reality.
A Reddit thread on the situation features nearly 2,500 comments at the time of this writing. While PC-powered VR could still be a hit even with slow shipments, the delay could hurt developers who invested a lot of time, effort and good faith in building software for the budding Oculus VR platform. With devices trickling out, it’s not clear when small indie developers might see enough downloads to continue developing VR software.
Oculus previously delayed the Touch controllers.
Updates to come.
