Even though Oculus is woefully behind in shipping Rift pre-orders to customers, the company has courted more controversy by moving forward with its retail plans, which includes letting people buy Rifts at places like US retailer Best Buy.
“For many, this is a first chance to jump into truly immersive VR,” reads a company blog post explaining the plan.
This is probably true! Though the coming of virtual reality has been hyped for years, the last month or so has witnessed devices finally shipping.
It’d be one thing if these “retail experiences” were simply a way for people to try out VR, but that would be silly. It makes sense Oculus wants people to buy a Rift the moment they’re sold on it, so Best Buy will have Rifts on-hand, too.
The problem for Oculus is that shipping hasn’t gone smoothly, with the company having to push pre-orders back substantially for a number of customers. My own pre-order was moved from April to June — a big delay!
Oculus says “select” Best Buy locations will have access to a “small number” of Rifts on May 7, with both Amazon and Microsoft’s online store getting their own units on May 6.
Those units will apparently be “extremely limited” until pre-orders normalise, and I suspect the online orders will disappear almost immediately.
Does this mean someone could walk into Best Buy and purchase a Rift before their own pre-order ships? Yep. Oculus has prepared for this situation, it seems.
We know that many pre-order customers are still waiting for their Rifts, so we’re offering those customers a chance to purchase Rift from retail instead — while keeping their pre-order benefits, like the EVE: Valkyrie Founder’s Pack and priority status for Touch pre-orders. Starting May 6th, if you’re interested, simply go to your order status and let us know you’ve purchased a Rift at retail, and we’ll cancel your pre-order. Your EVE: Valkyrie entitlement will appear in your order history.
It’s not a good look for the company.
Unfortunately there aren’t yet any retail locations for the Rift in Australia. However, the blog post states that they will be introduced to international locations in Canada and Europe in spring, so hopefully it’s only a matter of time.
From what I understand, these retail agreements were made far in advance; at some point, they simply had to happen. That doesn’t make it any easier for anxious virtual reality fans who’ve patiently waited for their own kits, though.
Comments
6 responses to “Oculus Rift Pre-Order Issues Have Only Gotten More Confusing”
Ugh, I am so sick of the outrage people are spewing out over every little thing (not necessarily talking about this article). Everyone acting as though Best Buy has taken their Rift and will make them have to wait even longer, as if Oculus should have taken the Rifts away from the retailers to give to pre-orders instead. And then acting as though that offer for pre-orders to buy at retail without losing their pre-order bonuses is a BAD thing?
I need to figure out how to keep up with VR goings-on but skip out on all the yelling and screaming and whining.
every VR headset in mass production is sold and going to a customer…. rift or vive, with a 3-6 month wait time for orders
best buy customers are going in that que too
the whining is not going to change all that
From what I can gather reading the various articles giving updates on the Oculus Rift it seems more of a shipping issue rather than availability of units. Their arrangements with the first shipping company fell through which left them scrambling to sort something else out and caused delays.
Presumably they’ve come to some kind of arrangement now but it’s still easier to do a bulk shipment to a Best Buy warehouse than it is to do single shipments to a few thousand different addresses.
Interesting, I haven’t heard that one. Got a link about the shipping company thing?
aus authorities held the first units for a while as well to make sure it was up to standards
thats all fixed tho now and they seem to be flowing into oz
yer there is heaps of shipping issues all around the world,,, containers of 1000s of rifts going out, its a logistical nightmare
getting em into stores will help
Nope you got it all wrong. They have run into production problem in January but they refuse to delay their preorder to compete with vive, then announce the issue after the major delay in March after being silent about missing shipping dates. Then they were force to update shipping for all preorder which delay everyone 1-2 months from the estimated time.
Then they claim that their australia batch shipping is held by immigration due to non compliance in the document processing, probably true but no one really believe them anymore.
Not to mention kickstarters have not received their rifts and bundle rifts in the U.S. we’re immediately send out by those that order it as it launch which preorders are still not being fulfilled, then now inidividual rifts are going retail whole preorders and kickstarters are not fulfilled again.
It is such a large f@#k you to their customers who were already losing patience. Feels to me that they always knew delays were coming but they had to get people into pre-orders before the (arguably) better experience of the Vive came along. The whole thing reeks, but most things facebook does reek.