Update – Oculus has released a statement on the delay which reads, “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.”
It seems that the folks at Oculus VR might have underestimated the demand for their Oculus Rift headset. Last we heard, some customers had yet to receive their headsets despite pre-ordering them early on. The company has since apologized to customers and have also waived the shipping fees as a token of their apology.
While we suppose that does help make up for the delays, we’re not sure if free shipping is enough to make up for the fact that some customers are experiencing some pretty severe delays. According to some users who posted on the Oculus forums, they have received emails informing them that their shipments have been delayed to May.
According to one user, “Mine says [9th-19th May]. I had mine purchased within the first 10 minutes. Disappointing. My Vive is coming in April sometime. Hopefully there’s some better games in May.” Apparently the emails also mentioned that the reason behind the delays is due to component shortages, which like we said earlier could be due to Oculus underestimating just how many people were interested in purchasing their headset.
In the meantime the HTC Vive appears to be handling their orders somewhat decently. There was a bit of a hiccup with accidentally cancelled pre-orders, but an update on the HTC Vive blog has promised customers that they will receive their orders within the month of April.
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