Oculus Rift launch turns disastrous as preorders are delayed for months
The virtual reality future is off to a rocky start.
Shortly after the Rift launched late last month, Oculus had to inform many of its customers that their Rift orders would be delayed due to an "unexpected component shortage." Although the shipping cost for any delayed orders was waived, it appears that this was just the first in a string of issues.
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On Monday night, an Oculus customer support representative visited the Oculus subreddit with more bad news for Kickstarter backers:
"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."
Many Oculus Rift preorders have been fulfilled, as the message states above, but countless others have been delayed by weeks or even months, with some preorders expected to arrive as late as August. Polygon says that several members of its staff placed their orders for the Rift within minutes of the preorders going live, but the shipping estimates on their orders now show May or June.
As expected, customers aren't happy with these developments:
https://twitter.com/thiojoe/status/719848136341110784
https://twitter.com/nathie944/status/719883979214753792
https://twitter.com/JustinMcElroy/status/719727778367696896
https://twitter.com/zirakuta/status/719809043284361216
https://twitter.com/jeffcannata/status/719706333445013504
We'll keep an eye out for any further updates on the situation.
UPDATE: Oculus provided the following statement regarding the delays:
"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."
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This article was originally published on BGR.com
