Facebook’s Oculus had a sale recently on the Oculus Rift. That summer bundle dramatically lowered the price point of serious VR (to around $600 Aussie dollars) and was supposed to make it affordable for the masses. There’s just one problem, its not available.
Being an enthusiast and a developer, I have wanted to buy into VR for quite some time and the release of the hand controllers certainly got me excited about the potential applications. So when the Rift bundle arrived included 2 sensors, the headset, the controllers and a bunch of free games, I was sold. I promptly handed over the credit card and waited for the email with an ETA. There wasn’t one.
After ordering on the 19th of July, its now more than 2 weeks later and the status of my order, like many others, is TBA. Being delayed in deliver is one thing and disappointing enough, but having no ETA is frankly unacceptable for a company of this size.
Perhaps the craziest part of this is that despite length waits and back orders, Oculus are still happily taking new orders when they can’t fulfill the existing ones or provide an ETA for delivery. I’ve been close to cancelling a few times and after reading plenty of threads on Reddit, many are, but I’ve experienced the Rift in the past when I reviewed it, know the possibilities and really seriously can’t wait for it to arrive.
I just want to know when.
Update
After submitting a support ticket with Oculus, I received an update on the progress of the order. It looks like the wait will continue for at least another couple of weeks. Oculus are expecting stock back in mid-August, then add shipping to Australia and we’ll looking at a likely more than a month from the original order date.
Below is the original order screen.