At the beginning of the month Oculus customers received emails informing them there would be a delay in shipping the VR device due to an “unexpected component shortage.” There weren’t any timelines given and customers critisied Oculus for a lack of communication.

A new statement has now been released by a spokesperson for Oculus:

“The component shortage impacted our quantities more than we expected, and we’ve updated the shipment window to reflect these changes. We apologize for the delay.

We’re delivering Rifts to customers every day, and we’re focused on getting Rifts out the door as fast as we can. We’ve taken steps to address the component shortage, and we’ll continue shipping in higher volumes each week. We’ve also increased our manufacturing capacity to allow us to deliver in higher quantities, faster. Many Rifts will ship less than four weeks from original estimates, and we hope to beat the new estimates we’ve provided.”

A thread on the Oculus subreddit has given more details with Redditors posting their expected delivery date:

“I ordered right at 9:00am. Little did I know they had opened it up 15 minutes early. Turns out I have to wait until mid June…”

“I’ve received my email with a 4/25/2016 – 5/5/2016 estimated delivery. Was one of the first to order within the first 2 to 3 minutes of pre-order start. This is a lot later than what I was expecting. Even though they are covered shipping costs, I’m still upset that this is even happening. I feel bad that others are getting their orders pushed back so far. I’m wondering what the repercussions of this are going to be.”

Pre-orders became available on January 6th, with customers expecting to receive their headsets by April.

“We’re working hard to get up-to-date ship windows, and you should expect to see your order status updated on oculus.com by Tuesday, April 12th.”

With close competition from the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR, does this reflect badly on Oculus?