If you were one of the first to order an Oculus Rift to arrive this month, then you might want brace yourself to wait a bit longer as Oculus has revealed a ‘component shortage’ will now delay its arrival.
There was much hoopla about the Oculus Rift on its big launch day on 28 March, with previous pre-orders supposedly beginning to ship from that date last month, yet the virtual reality (VR) ship has not had a smooth sailing.
So far, orders have trickled out to the first set of people who ordered it the first day they could but, in the past week, promises that had been made to customers that it would arrive by the end of last week seemed to have not been kept.
Now, in an email statement to these customers, Oculus has admitted that the Oculus Rift will take a bit longer to arrive than previously stated due to what the company is describing as an “unexpected components shortage”.
Oculus said they will update orders on 12 April and give an estimated arrival date after that.
First set of Rifts are going out slower than we orig estimated, so we're giving free shipping for all pre-orders, including international.
— Brendan Iribe (@brendaniribe) April 2, 2016
Oculus is attempting to ease any grumblings from customers by covering the shipping and handling costs of getting the headsets to them for all pre-orders.
As Road to VR points out, this is actually a considerable amount of money for customers outside of the US, with their estimates placing it as being worth somewhere in the region of close to $100.
Also interesting to note is that with this delayed shipment date, one of its biggest headset competitors, the HTC Vive, will now be on a level playing field in terms of headset releases, with its first shipments due to begin tomorrow (5 April) to international customers.
Oculus Rift prototype headset image via Maurizio Pesce/Flickr
