Oculus Rift early adopters finding shipments delayed by up to three months

Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey hand delivered the first headset to developer and gamer in Alaska — Oculus founder Palmer Luckey wearing a Rift headset. Getty Images

Update: Oculus has issued a statement on the issue.

"The component shortage impacted our quantities more than we expected, and we've updated the shipment window to reflect these changes. We apologise 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."

Original Article: Oculus Rift's much-anticipated launch continues to get messier, with many users who pre-ordered the virtual reality (VR) headset finding their orders have been delayed by upwards of three months. Oculus had previously revealed that a component shortage had impacted the initial run of shipments.

Those who pre-ordered the headset ahead of the official 28 March release date, have taken to the web with their complaints. On Reddit a thread began with a user saying their order's estimated shipping date was now 13-23 June. Another user responded that his date had slipped to June, and then again to July.

On Twitter Kotaku senior reporter Patrick Klepek said: "The Oculus Rift that I pre-ordered has been bumped from shipping in April to June. What a smooth launch!" YouTuber ThioJoe tweeted: "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."

Yesterday (11 April), Oculus customer support posted on the Oculus subreddit: "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."

The problem is affecting users no matter how quickly they placed their order once pre-orders went live in January.