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Update: Oculus VR has contacted pre-orderers who were promised a March shipping date, with a statement on what the status of their order is. It reads as follows:
“We know you're anxious to receive your Oculus Rift and apologize for not updating your order status sooner,” the Oculus Team said in the email. “We've been working through an unexpected component shortage, and unfortunately, that issue has impacted the original shipping estimates for some early customers.”
If users were hoping that this addressing of the situation would mean an immediate turn around though, they are mistaken. Oculus continues in the communiqué, claiming that the orders' status would be updated by 12th April. That means that some that were pledged to ship in March, may not ship until mid-April.
While Oculus does say that a number of Rifts will still go out on time, that others will not be able to ship out just yet. In comparison, Oculus' main competitor, HTC with its Vive headset, is set to begin shipping its commercial headsets out in the next day or so. It will be interesting to see which arrives first for some consumers.
Original Storage: Poor old Oculus VR hasn't had the easiest time over the past week. As well as a number of lukewarm reviews of the final product and its content line up (amid much stronger ones), it seems to have missed shipping dates on a number of the earliest pre-orders. This has left many fans hankering for more information, but as has been the company's norm in recent months, it's remaining tight lipped.
Despite having difficulties actually taking payments on its site when the Oculus Rift went up for pre-orders earlier this year, thousands of eager VR enthusiasts crowded round and persevered until they were able to reserve their headset for $600 in the U.S., and as much as £530 with shipping in the UK. At the time, the earliest orderers were promised their headset would ship in March, but we're already in April, and not much has happened.
All we want to do is spend the weekend doing this
Sure we've seen Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey himself hand-deliver the very first rift in an awkward exchange all filmed for posterity and clearly some review sites have been given the headset, but what about those that pre-ordered? Original Kickstarter backers have started receiving their units, so at least those that have supported Oculus from the start are getting some love, but those that have been backing its latest efforts haven't received the same attention.
Two members of staff at KitGuru – myself and Matthew – have Rift pre-orders that guaranteed a March shipping date, but here we are in April and neither of us have had our cards charged and no email has come to say the order is processing. Clearly we're not the only ones either, as Paul Tassi at Forbes is having the same issue.
He did get a response from Oculus when he chased up where his order was, but it said that it couldn't give him more information at this time.
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KitGuru Says: As much as we'd love to hear a solution, be careful with anything you read today. It is April after all.
Same here
I’m going to remember this botched launch when it comes to ordering my 2nd Gen HMD… After being a pretty strong supporter of the company, I’m now thinking I should have bought a Vive and that I will never give Oculus another dime.
I ordered both and will cancel the one that doesnt arrive.
Not that I want to play Devils advocate, but you are straight up lying in this news post. It was always an estimate, never a promised date when the Rift will be shipped.
Sadly Oculus has squandered a ton of goodwill. This radio silence isn’t helping and people are getting super pissed. The Vive was set to release a week later but will have more headsets in the field before oculus.
They promised a LOT of pre orderers a March release. It was actually the only thing going for the Rift against the Vive – it lacks roomscale, motion controls, higher hz+rez BUT it comes a week earlier. I’m honestly not surprised at Oculus for this and feel for those who are missing out on VR for the time being, but at the same time I am quasi-secretly laughing my ass off at all the people who shitposted about how Vive was one week later and now they aren’t getting theirs until after Vives launch to the masses. Also, I wouldn’t expect Valve to fuck up something like shipping but I guess there’s always the chance (hopefully not) 😉
It was only an estimate rather than a guarantee, but even so the complete lack if credible communication really puts me off using them again. In hindsight i wish i had ordered the vive instead.
Then it should be easy to provide some proof, right?
Also, the rift can handle room scaling pretty well.
Pretty funny that you would say anything about shit posters but do the exact same thing in the very same post.
The vive doesn’t have a waiting list, you can still cancel your rift order and get a vive
I am perfectly happy waiting, and I am reasonable enough to understand that life is not all royal flushes and home runs. People understand that bringing a concept to a mass produced consumer product is not an easy thing.
What really makes me question whether I should invest into the oculus ecosystem is the subterfuge around this launch. The sudden decision to give kick starters a head start (to buy time), the 1 – 3 week email (which raised more questions than it answered), and all of the subterfuge that has gone into making this seem like this is how it was supposed to go.
As I’ve been a technology early adopter most my life I find these comments hysterical. When someone uses words like “guarantee” and “here we are in April” when Oculus never guaranteed anything and April has been here for about 12 hours it’s clearly sensationalism. Those crying that they will never give Oculus another dime or that they’ve botched the release are diluting themselves. Oculus is a very young company and this is their first mass market product. If you didn’t expect that things would get slightly delayed then again you’re diluting yourself. Virtually every technology company has experienced delays with their 1.0 products, some with their 5th product after years of existence. Will the Vive get to customers hands before the Rift, who knows and who cares. We will all soon have our devices, then soon we’ll have our 2.0 devices then sooner than we realize it’ll be a few years down the line and we’ll all have long forgotten about this non-story. While it would have been cool of Oculus to be more transparent with updated shipping dates I can’t blame them at all for keeping quiet, if they were to announce updated dates and miss those too it would add further fire to this idiocy. It’s clearly in their and our best interest for them to stay heads down working as hard as they can to get units to customers rather than get into a PR fight with entitled fanboys and haters. So chill, we’ll all be enjoying VR very soon, how about everyone go outside for a few hours and enjoy the world a little bit in the meantime.
Somehow I doubt that Oculus will miss you as I also doubt that you’ll not give them another dime. I suggest you think about your self-entitled attitude and grow up a little bit. We’ll all soon be enjoying VR and this non-story will be a thing of the past.
diluting? LOL. Maybe before you spent that money on a rift you should have bought a dictionary.
If you think that I’m alone, you’re an idiot. Also, everyone who is an early adopter of VR will be an influencer for the 2nd round of HMD’s. So when my friends and family ask what they should buy, guess where I’ll steer them?
Self entitled would mean I want one for free. I’m a paying customer where they misled me. If McDonalds sold you a burger for $5 and took 1 hour to give it to you, we both know you’d be pissed. That’s a $5 food item and only 1 hour of time. We’re talking about a $700 item and days to weeks of time.
Did exactly that. Vive charged me tax though that was disapointing.
Welcome to the future of virtual reality Close your eyes and step inside. Things are about to get weird Oculus Rift Fooling Senses Making Unreal Real. For full info A to zvisit- Oculus Rift Fooling Senses Making Unreal Real
Oh I don’t think you’re alone at all – in fact you’re part of quite a few that have been very vocal about all this. While your McDonalds reference seems relevant it’s a very different thing. If you had gone to the very first McDonalds on opening day with every person that wanted to try it you would likely have to wait an hour for that burger. As a very mature and long lived company McDonalds has set your expectation that you can get that same burger in mere seconds and not in the hour wait.
Has Oculus done this perfectly, of course not. Should they be more transparent to their customers, us early adopters? Probably and possibly. But for everyone to get so angry that we don’t have our new shiny toy from a company that’s never shipped a production shiny toy just isn’t realistic. We’re all going to love VR and I predict that once you have your Rift in hand you’ll tell those friends and family a 2 minute story about the short delay and a 20 minute story about how amazing it is. 6 months from now you’ll drop the delay as they’ll be readily available in stores and it will no longer be an issue.
That is all of course assuming that they do get the units out soon and this delay remains days and doesn’t become weeks. If they do continue to drop the ball and us early adopters don’t get units until say May then I’ll join the chorus crying fowl. Hopefully that won’t be the case and you and I are racing and dog fighting in VR very soon. I’m very much looking forward to that.
Um I’m not sure what you don’t understand about the term to “dilute oneself”. Perhaps you should head over to dictionary.com to understand the context in which I used the term. I find it hysterical when trolls have no argument left and instead try to cling to some grammatical or spelling mistake.
Just try to relax, we’ll be enjoying VR soon enough I promise.
Kickstarter backer #1, 000 here, mine still hasnt shipped. I was so excited the days leading up to the 28th that I was losing sleep. Now I think my psvr will arrive first
I agree with all your points, so I’m not trolling, but are you sure you didn’t mean “deluding” instead of “diluting”?
Just don’t come with lies “the earliest orderers were promised their headset would ship in March”, is not true. it said EXPECTED shipping. Big difference.
omg i have to screenshot this
The point is exactly what you said and you don’t realize it. People aren’t upset about the lack of a toy, they’re upset at the lack of communication and systemic over-promising under-delivering culture at Oculus.
yeah I really do not recommend going to r/oculus at the moment. There is so much drama going on. I already seen facebook-app-spying-gate, missing-extra-face-gasket-gate, lens-god-rays-gate, FOV-gate, easy-soiling-fabric-gate –gosh its better just to phase out until it arrive. Yes – I preordered +6mins 26x order. still waiting
“Also, the Rift can handle room scaling pretty well.”
Now that’s a subjective statement if I’ve ever heard one.
dude you just hit the rock bottom. I read and understood his opinion so what’s your problem.
There is gap in your theory. Oculus didn’t charge you when you pre-ordered in January.
Also amount of orders they received plus all FREE backer kits together passed their most positive expectations so obviously this can introduce some logistics problem, don’t you think.
Ok give some examples of that under-delivering culture. I don’t get it. People for some reason feel emotionally attached to the whole issue. Delays happen mate. Vive was promised to be consumer available end of the last year. Later they said: – Nope we meant for the selected devs only. Did you also cried about that too?
If this happened to any of the big 3 there would be riots. So yeah I’m a little ticked about this whole situation.
Yeah, have admit you’re right Shane, that is precisely what I meant. I’ll admit I did honestly think both were interchangeable, obviously there is a difference in the meaning of the two, thanks for pointing it out and my apology for my grammar gaff. I’m big enough to admit when I make a mistake, especially a public one.
So while sure I might have used the wrong spelling the context and meaning is what I was after. If someone wants to argue that I used the wrong spelling you’ve got me, you win. That doesn’t make my points any less valid and I appreciate the way you pointed it out Shane, thanks.
First twattermaster is completely correct as well. I’m also not sure where Oculus has a culture of over promising and under-delivering, can you clarify that? I’ve not once read that they “promised” or “guaranteed” anything. Sure, they said it would ship in late March and they didn’t hit that. Did they promise that to me or you, no, not that I saw. I’m having a hard time understanding how one could think a company producing a product as revolutionary as the Rift is under-delivering, that feels like a very dishonest argument to me but if that’s your opinion you’re entitled to it I just don’t see it that way in the slightest.
Do you remember the whole pricing issue?
Honestly no, not other than it was quite a lot more expensive than many hoped or assumed. I wasn’t surprised by the price at all given the bleeding edge nature of the tech. The only thing that’s surprised me is the resolution of the panels, I was sorta expecting it to be higher than the 1200/1080 I’ve read so far.
You’re an idiot for trying to jab at someone with something that isn’t even relevant. I never said it couldn’t handle room scale well *cough* with its 2 feet of roomscale *cough*. When I say ‘roomscale’ I’m not talking about the coord that Oculus uses so that you have the ability to look around and lean in a couple of directions in your chair. When I say roomscale I mean ACTUAL roomscale. You know, being able to use your entire ROOM. You’re the only one doing any shitposting and pushing people to shitpost back. Try and find a dependable argument next time you try to stir things up 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_HlXzELHgo
now go choke on your shitposts.
This was the video I was going to link to show the shortcomings rift has with roomscale lol.
I’m so glad you guys have had this experience, because other March recipients who have not yet received their CV1’s have been called an unlucky minority in certain forums. Or simply impatient pricks.
Oculus repeatedly stuffs up their shipping. DK1 and DK2 shipping was a an absolute abortion.
This is now 3 out of 3 failed delivery attempts.
A product launch is never easy, but they’ve had 2 attempts and plenty of bad experiences to learn from…but they keep making the same mistakes.
that’s not actually true, orders now for Vive are backed up to May
You clearly decided to back oculus instead of vive against your best interest. That’s all good, you made a mistake. Clearly. Instead of realising this and making it up to yourself but canceling you oculus when you realism not only that it is tact on VR, and that they fucked up shipping, you come to a blog post explaining how they fucked you over, and you STILL defend them? If you had any intelegence whatsoever, you would stop arguing with people on the Internet. Honestly, what can the Oculus so that Vive can’t to better? And you justify buying it because it will have controls in a YEAR and will cost just as much as Vive does now. Just save yourself from looking like a twat and don’t reply. You will appreciate it in a few weeks when oculus does fix their problems and you realize they jipped you.
Ok firstly, it doesn’t matter which HMD you buy. Both are first gen and have their own issues. Vive has a stronger SDE, Rift has Halo Artifacts. Both have their pros and cons.
Secondly the only “clear” thing is that you are a pissed kid that wanted a Rift soooo badly that when you missed the Pre Order launch and now would have to wait for several more month you just startedn to flip your shit.
Thirdly, I NEVER defended their lack of communitcation and never will. I called for fair play from Kitguru, nothing more, nothing less. But reading comprehension doesn’t seem to be your strong suit. (let’s see when you try to hide behind being a foreigner and that english isn’t your native language, lol)
You run around, make claims without any proof and get angry when you’re called out on that. This has nothing to do with an discussion, it’s me wasting time trying to tell some mentally challenged kid that they are part of the reason why most open discussion platforms are filed with toxic attitudes like yours.
Yeah my bad, it’s only April date if you are lucky. When someone cancels his order the spot in that line gets free and the next one to go to the order site will get that spot and see the April shipping date instantly =/
thats messed up, if I was a Vive pre-orderer with a May date and I knew people were jumping the queue I’d be just as upset as I am about Oculus messing up their launch
Just tried it again…
http://i.imgur.com/l7bHDNb.png
That’s really messed up =/
Well with the update that went out last night it seems I may be joining those who are getting upset by this. I assume you got the update that indicates we probably won’t know more until the 12th, another 10 days from now. If things shipped that day they would be 3 weeks late and even I have to admit that’s getting pretty bad. I’m also not sure I buy the “component shortage” but rather think it’s simply delays in their production process that are putting things behind. The offer of free shipping is nice and if they get things out by the 12th I probably think that’s as good an apology as any but if it continues to slip after that, and my gut has to admit it will, then I’ll start to cry foul as well…
You mean, go outside because you’ll never need to again with VR 😛
Anyway, just because other companies also have had delays, oculus isn’t excused for having them as well. If we are expecting products to be significantly delayed, as we apparently have to, then there is something really wrong. Any development process has setbacks, but either every single developer underestimates these setbacks even after having seen that their competitors make the same mistakes – i.e., they’re incompetent planners – or they’re lying to costumers. Both are bad. You can’t predict setbacks, but when you know they’re going to happen, plan for them. The market likes to say that government sucks at this kind of thing, but as we see here, private companies are no better.
And let’s not forget that Oculus isn’t some small start-up anymore. Facebook took care of that.
To me, it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to buy it anyway at this point. To few games, way too much money.
Alright, so your response to my comment was that I am a foreigner? Really? I was using my phone (autocorrect is a bitch, just like you). Also, I never once even considered getting an oculus CV1, even before all of truths came out about discrepancies and such. I have a dev kit, wasn’t about to spend more money one something that I already have and promises to be just like the Vive, but only in a year – you see, I for one know how to do some research and not blatantly waste my money unlike some people *cough* you if you’re not getting it through your special way of comprehension *cough*. Oh, and you stated a pro for the Vive and a con for Oculus CV1 at the beginning of your comment by the way (proving my point, as well). I guess I’m not the only one who’s “reading comprehension doesn’t seem to be their strong suit”. Not please, stop bitching like a 12 year old and get your shit together. I’m pretty sure you can still cancel your order and save your money. But you’ll probably just comment back telling me that English isn’t my native language, even when you have the grammar and vocabulary of a 12 year old, lol.
Wait what? A stronger SDE is a PRO? SDE stands for ScreenDoor Effect you moron xD
1. I wasn’t talking about your comment on the SDE (fact check?)
2. They were canceled because of external companies. That means banks. I’ll keep dumbing it down for you since you clearly aren’t perceptive enough to realize this on your own, but certain banks that cancel large orders have nothing to do with HTC… (check. your. facts.) Nor was my order cancelled, I’ll be enjoying it soon enough, don’t worry your self over that 🙂
Why would they not charge you tax?
Ad hominem attacks are the new normal, didn’t you hear? Much easier to focus on the sender of a message, when you can’t find faults in his argument even though you disagree with it. 😛 That’s his problem.
You see, that’s the thing with words such as “a lot” and estimates, they don’t have to mean the same thing to you as it does to the people using those words. Basically, they stated an intent to deliver “a lot” of units in March, but never promised to. Maybe the numbers already delivered can be seen as a lot of units, maybe not.
Do you have a source on the explicit promise you’re referring to?
OK, so how can you have an unexpected component supply?
They planned for the launch. Had pre-orders taken.
I assume they contracted suppliers with a certain supply level agreement!
Well gents it looks like I’m now starting to join your bandwagon as I just got another update from Oculus (assuming everyone did) saying that my ship date had been updated and to check out. Now that they are going to miss the date by more than a month I too am getting very frustrated. Ugh.