Today Oculus announced further delays on Rift shipments, potentially as long as two months for some customers, sparking outrage amongst VR fans. The company confirmed once again that the delay was due to a component shortage, and that they were shipping units as quickly as possible. Oculus still remains tight-lipped on what component exactly has caused the shortage, but that hasn’t stopped Reddit users from speculating. Multiple theories, ranging from issues with the camera used to track the headset, to a lack of wireless Xbox One dongles, were made. According to a post to Reddit by a supposed Oculus employee, under the alias ‘cvinsider’, it may be due to Microsoft.
In their post to the Oculus subreddit they claims that the reason for the delay was due to a mistake made by Microsoft’s stocking department, and that the 100 thousand controllers & dongles that Oculus had ordered were never allocated and reserved. They also go on to claim that the reason for Oculus taking so long to publicly address the issue was down to them attempting to source controllers from third parties, and were unsure on whether there would be any significant delays.
According to cvinsider, the new shipping dates provided by the VR company are very conservative, and units should ship on the first day of the estimate barring any further issues. Finally, they state that Oculus has now received 80 thousand controllers, and that shipping will be “full speed” starting next week (though we’ve heard this before).
I contacted cvinsider and asked them to verify their identity. They replied with the following:
“Hi,
Thanks for reaching out. There is a lot of information in my post that absolutely should not be disclosed under any circumstances (volumes, relationship with Microsoft and so on) and I am confident that it would be better for everyone (from legal and ethical point of view) to keep this information as “unverified”, so it can be regarded simply as “unconfirmed rumor” rather than security leak in Oculus that legal and cybersecuity departments have to deal with – not to mention damage to the reputation of the company if “verified leak” makes it to the media.
The aim of my post was to try to fill the void caused by lack of concrete information (not Oculus fault) and ensure you that we really work hard, listen and feel your pain – just to give people some perspective, that might not be immediately visible. If it makes even a few people more content about recent developments – it is good enough for me.”
Time will tell whether cvinsider is genuine, or simply someone looking to gain some attention by telling the Oculus Rift community what they want to hear. The only thing that is certain is that most of those waiting for their Oculus Rift are going to have to wait even longer than they’d hoped.