Oculus VR products will arrive later than estimated due to “unexpected component shortage”, announced company CEO Brendan Iribe on Sunday, via Twitter. All pre-orders of the Oculus Rift between January and end of April 1 will qualify for free shipping.
The Facebook unit (NASDAQ: FB), has sent an email to customers saying that it is working hard to accelerate the shipping process and that all order statuses will be updated by Tuesday, April 12, according to a picture posted on Twitter by Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Marketing Land.
“We know you are anxious to receive your Oculus Rift and apologize for not updating your order status sooner. We’ve been working through an unexpected component shortage, and unfortunately, that issue has impacted the original shipping estimates for some early customers” said the email.
Nonetheless, some orders will arrive on schedule since the Virtual Reality (VR) company is “shipping Rifts every day”. At any rate, Oculus is giving free shipping to everyone, including international customers, for orders set between January and April 1.
Oculus was acquired by the tech giant Facebook in 2014, in a $2 billion deal. Since then, the development of its flagship product was impulsed, until it was released in 2016. The Oculus Rift headset costs $599 and needs a high-end PC to work. Oculus has also allied with PC developers such as Dell and Alienware, to sell Oculus-ready computers.
HTC Vive is delayed, due to “processing issues”
The main Oculus Rift rival is the HTC Vive, with a price of $799. However, it comes with some extra features that are not included in the Oculus Rift, such as two motion-sensing controllers, and “Lighthouse” bay station beacons, which allow up to 49 feet fully tracked gameplay areas, to be set in different places, while the Oculus has just one camera.
Both headsets come with the titles “Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives” and “Fantastic Contraption”. HTC has also included Tilt Brush, a software developed by Google to paint in 3D space with VR.
First, HTC Vive headsets are expected to arrive this week, however, some customers have been affected by payment issues and won’t receive their devices on time, said the Taiwanese company in a statement issued Saturday.
“While fulfilling this week’s orders for HTC Vive, a limited number of individuals were affected by auto cancellations due to processing issues with financial institutions. We’re actively working to resolve this, and have already reinstated orders for some customers.” HTC said.
As revolutionary as the PC or the smartphone: Virtual Reality will dominate the tech market of the future
The game industry wants to reinvent itself with Virtual Reality. Several brands have already created teams of VR development to create highly immersive titles while tech analytics firm Piper Jaffray & Co has calculated that Oculus will sell 500,000 units in 2016, which could represent 1% of all Facebook’s revenue.
On the other hand, research firm Tractica and Goldman Sachs has predicted that by 2020, tech companies will have sold more than 200 million VR headsets. Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Intel and probably Apple, are investing in the same segment.
Source: Brendan Iribe