Virtual Reality Hit by Reality of Delays

You’ll have to wait a bit longer to escape reality as both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are experiencing delays on shipping headsets because of several problems.

In a shipping update addressed to Oculus customers to find out when they would get their hands on Oculus they were informed that, due to “component shortages” some people might not receive the headsets for months. “From a March 28th date to May 9th at the earliest” wrote awatts82 on the Oculus forums.

For those that backed Oculus on Kickstarter the news is even worse; “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.” TheTwistgibber wrote.

As for HTC Vive customers, the story is slightly better, a shipment update from HTC released 11th of April stated that, “Your Vive system will be shipped in the month noted in your order confirmation email.”

If you received a confirmation for April, you are absolutely going to get your order in April.

— Daniel O’Brien (@obriend17) 7 April 2016

Even Daniel O’Brien, the Vice President of HTC’s VR department, got involved to try to calm the frustrated headset customers. After one purchaser had replied that it sounded impossible to deliver “all April pre-orders in April”, Daniel said the famous How I Met Your Mother line, “Challenge accepted”.

People are now confirming on Reddit that shipping confirmation is starting to come through, so at least some people will be getting their hands on the Vive, but it remains to be seen if it will be for everyone.

If you are affected by the delays I hope you get some more helpful information through soon, but if you are not, enjoy ignoring everyone with your new VR device.