Buyers who have placed pre orders for the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive may have to put their dreams of exploring games in virtual reality on hold for the time being as both companies have stated that there are hiccups preventing the prompt delivery of the VR devices.
In the case of the Rift, Oculus has announced that due to an unexpected shortfall of components needed to make the Rifts, resulting in deliveries being delayed to users who expected a Rift over the next few days. As a means to amend the situation, Oculus will be giving free shipping to these early adopters as compensation, but they won’t get updated shipping statuses until April 12th.
First set of Rifts are going out slower than we orig estimated, so we're giving free shipping for all pre-orders, including international.
— Brendan Iribe (@brendaniribe) April 2, 2016
Meanwhile, users who have frantically thrown money at the HTC Vive have reported that their credit card information was declined and as a result could not attempt to place another preorder. As a result some early bird pre orderers have been bumped back in the queue or, in some cases, losing their order. It’s not sure if the faulty transactions actually remove money from the would-be owners’ accounts, which if it does can result in panic attacks to the tune of $799. HTC has blamed banks for the processing issues and say they are working hard to to resume orders in the correct sequence but they aren’t sure when that will be.
Unfortunately it looks like the two heavyweights in virtual reality gaming are facing a rocky start to what could be the next form of gaming.
