Oculus Rift's launch is looking increasingly dire as more customers with pre-orders are seeing their shipping dates pushed back further into the year.
"We've been working through an unexpected component shortage, and unfortunately the issue has impacted has impacted the original shipping estimates for some early customers," an earlier statement from Oculus explained. Pre-order customers saw the costs of shipping waived as a way to apologize for the delay, but it seems as if this is an ongoing issue, and could be getting worse.
Customers have received emails that have, in many cases, delayed the shipping estimates by months. The estimated ship date for new hardware ordered today has moved from July to August, meaning any new orders are four months away from reaching customers.
Oculus customer support posted this update to the Oculus subreddit as well:
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.
Customers who ordered within the first few hours of the first day of availability are seeing their orders significantly delayed as well, including some members of the Polygon staff. While the system has "launched," it seems as if Oculus is having significant issues fulfilling orders to any of its customers, and new order fulfillment now won't begin until the second half of the year at the earliest.
Customers, some of them high profile members of the tech community, aren't pulling many punches when it comes to describing the situation.
Order processed 12 mins after Oculus went on sale. My new estimated ship date: 5/16-5/26, 2 months after "release" That’s a botched launch.
— Jeff Cannata (@jeffcannata) April 12, 2016
Enthusiasts for the technology are also expressing their frustrations.
Man, it's rough obsessing about a product for 3 years and then watching the launch be so miserable.
— Sanborn (@BSanbizzle) April 12, 2016
My "April" delivery turned into June.
People are not happy.
Cancelled my Oculus Rift pre-order. A 2 month delay is insane; no point in doing a review 3 months after release. Gonna vote with my dollar.
— ThioJoe (@thiojoe) April 12, 2016
The Oculus Rift that I pre-ordered has been bumped from shipping in April to June. What a smooth launch!
— Patrick Klepek (@patrickklepek) April 12, 2016
Oh, so it looks like my Oculus Rift is shipping between May 23rd and June 2nd. So much for April!
— Devin Connors (@devinconnors) April 12, 2016
We've reached out to Oculus for comment, but have yet to hear back at the time of publication.
Update: Oculus has sent the following statement:
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.