With the Oculus Rift launch day now weeks behind us, you would expect that pre-orders would have already arrived by now. Instead, many of them were delayed until July earlier this month, with Oculus offering little more than a promise that today, April 12, would bring more concrete details to the table.
Now that that day has come, the new expected ship date has switched from July all the way to August, meaning that pre-order customers thought would be on their doorsteps in late March will now show up at least four months tardy.
Sifting through the mostly hyberbolic feedback on Reddit, iDigitalTimes’ Scott Craft remarked that the site received a predictably vague response from Oculus:
“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.”
The company told Polygon the same thing verbatim, but added:
“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.”
While it’s not clear as to why exactly these shipments are being held back, Palmer Luckey is continuing to hold responsible an “unexpected component shortage,” suggesting that the scarcity is unrelenting and serious.
We always hate letting people down. Can’t share any specifics on the component shortage, but we are doing our best. https://t.co/vEFlpWBTGv
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) April 12, 2016
Even those who backed the headset on Kickstarter back in 2012 might be in trouble, as the shipping estimates for the promised consumer edition Oculus Rifts are being modified to “TBD.” The hardware company, however, claims that its Kickstarter rewards are being fulfilled at a “regular cadence,” with a “large number” having already been delivered.
On the bright side, pre-orders for the Rift didn’t require any upfront payment, so they could easily be cancelled without complication. The bad news is for those early adopter types who were really eager to get their hands on the device before most of their friends.
