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Oculus Rift shipments delayed by a month or more due to unexpected component shortage

Krejlooc

Banned
We don't know how preventable this issue was, could be 0%, could be 100%. The controllers are much simpler devices and unless the component shortage is related to the camera, I don't see it having any impact on Touch.

This is a pattern at this point across multiple product releases.
 

YuShtink

Member
Man I went from being bitter to feeling like a lucky snowflake after receiving mine yesterday. If it makes you guys feel any better it's a really damn fine HMD and is worth the wait.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
if only they had a way on kickstarter to gauge how many people were interested in a Rift prior to trying to launch them
 

120v

Member
I got moved to july... feels bad man. But at least they gave a more specific timeframe now.
which it still probably won't make, but whatever
 
We don't know how preventable this issue was, could be 0%, could be 100%. The controllers are much simpler devices and unless the component shortage is related to the camera, I don't see it having any impact on Touch.

Even super-sensitive motion controllers? I mean, these things aren't normal controllers any more than the Oculus Rift is a normal screen.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Came to make this joke lol. Obviously we don't know what's going on but I've expected this kind of issue from Oculus alot more than Sony or HTC. FB probably has a good bit to climb in the world of hardware and being platform holders.

but they have the guy that did the guitar hero controllers working with factories in China. What could go wrong?
 

pj

Banned
Even super-sensitive motion controllers? I mean, these things aren't normal controllers any more than the Oculus Rift is a normal screen.

I was saying they are much simpler devices than the headset.

vBwIfGB.jpg

The super-sensitive motion sensing capability is mainly from an IMU that costs in the low single digit dollars. The other tracking component is a bunch of LEDs that just blink in a specific pattern.

Designing a good motion controller has to be extremely expensive and difficult. Once the design is set I don't see why it would be difficult to make, especially compared to the rift itself.


I have a drone that is about 1.5 inches wide drone that can fly with great stability using an onboard 6 axis gyro. It can stream live video from 100 feet in the air to my phone. It can also be be controlled with my phone or the included controller. It cost $35. It is an absolutely incredible device, but it costs almost nothing to make.
 
Shortage is fixed.

It's still the reason for the delays though.

i don't quite understand. If the delays everyone was told about TODAY are the result of shortages from BEFORE, how did they not know about the shortage until today?

I mean, in a way I guess it makes no difference; people would have been annoyed about the delay regardless of when it was announced, but...
 

Tunesmith

formerly "chigiri"
Not confirmed but someone on reddit is saying that the component shortage was actually Microsoft's fault.

https://m.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4ei5vx/this_is_what_went_wrong_with_the_launch_insider/

Came here to post this. Curiouser and curiouser. Right now I'm wondering how many XBO controllers Amazon has in stock.

Adding some coincidental straws to the haystack:

The wireless dongle is out of stock everywhere on Amazon until April 19 - May 4.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZB7W4QU/?tag=neogaf0e-20
 

WoolyNinja

Member
Maybe I'm missing something or maybe Oculus is just this inexperienced, but shouldn't they have known months ago how many of everything they'd have available at this point? How could a component shortage have just popped up now? These things are planned months if not years in advance.
 
Maybe I'm missing something or maybe Oculus is just this inexperienced, but shouldn't they have known months ago how many of everything they'd have available at this point? How could a component shortage have just popped up now? These things are planned months if not years in advance.

They were probably promised an allocation from a third party and that third party under delivered, leaving them with a shortage issue.

It happens but I do think Oculus' inexperience played a part.

There is a person on reddit who claims to be an insider saying it was the Xbox One Controller and wireless adapter.
 
Maybe I'm missing something or maybe Oculus is just this inexperienced, but shouldn't they have known months ago how many of everything they'd have available at this point? How could a component shortage have just popped up now? These things are planned months if not years in advance.

Shit happens
 
These delays are not a great start for Rift and Vive, hopefully it won't hurt VR too much, I've seen a lot of people complaining about having to wait a month or longer to get their VR. I always thought with how late pre-orders went up, they might have some problems.

i think Sony made a good choice to get pre-orders up now but delay until October, to give them enough time to make more units for launch, or they might have seen similar problems.

Not that problems couldn't happen with PS-VR but 6 months from pre-order to launch is much safer than 2 months.
 
Maybe I'm missing something or maybe Oculus is just this inexperienced, but shouldn't they have known months ago how many of everything they'd have available at this point? How could a component shortage have just popped up now? These things are planned months if not years in advance.

No, a lot of things are contracted out to other firms. If the vendor fails to notify Oculus of any problems. Oculus goes ahead. Backlog fills. Oculus is notified by vendor that they cannot meet projected demand close or after release, and the vendor states their only contractual obligations are 'x' quantity. Nothing Oculus can do. Nor could Oculus have been aware of the problem since the vendor did not notify them.
 

YuShtink

Member
They were probably promised an allocation from a third party and that third party under delivered, leaving them with a shortage issue.

It happens but I do think Oculus' inexperience played a part.

There is a person on reddit who claims to be an insider saying it was the Xbox One Controller and wireless adapter.

It does kind of make sense to me if only for the fact that MS would be one of the only third parties with enough clout to get away with forcing non-disclosure clauses where Oculus can't publicly release details about the issues. Also, parts coming from MS would probably be easier to take for granted because "hey, it's MS, a huge company with incredible resources so why wouldn't they deliver?"
 

YuShtink

Member
These delays are not a great start for Rift and Vive, hopefully it won't hurt VR too much, I've seen a lot of people complaining about having to wait a month or longer to get their VR. I always thought with how late pre-orders went up, they might have some problems.

i think Sony made a good choice to get pre-orders up now but delay until October, to give them enough time to make more units for launch, or they might have seen similar problems.

Not that problems couldn't happen with PS-VR but 6 months from pre-order to launch is much safer than 2 months.

It's not helping, but I don't think it will kill VR or anything like that. Because it really is a high quality, well made device once you get it in your hands and it really works. There is nothing snake oil-y about this. Once it gets out there it will undoubtedly take off.
 
It does kind of make sense to me if only for the fact that MS would be one of the only third parties with enough clout to get away with forcing non-disclosure clauses where Oculus can't publicly release details about the issues. Also, parts coming from MS would probably be easier to take for granted because "hey, it's MS, a huge company with incredible resources so why wouldn't they deliver?"

Only other third party with that clout would be Samsung with the display.
 
Not confirmed but someone on reddit is saying that the component shortage was actually Microsoft's fault.

https://m.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4ei5vx/this_is_what_went_wrong_with_the_launch_insider/

What do people make of this poster's claim at the end?

Ah, and the last thing: want some "proof"? Look at the serial numbers of XBox controllers shipped with Rifts so far. While normally range of these numbers should be relatively uniform, as they would be coming from one big preallocated "chunk", in fact the number can differ a lot as many of controllers are from the completely different batches - this is an echo of frantic search by Oculus Team for every available Xbox One controller in existence.

The bolded seems like something that should be verifiable--is this in fact how manufacturing works? That is to say, under normal circumstances, would we expect all Xbox controllers included in this type of hardware bundle to have similar serial numbers?
 

Struct09

Member
Not confirmed but someone on reddit is saying that the component shortage was actually Microsoft's fault.

https://m.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4ei5vx/this_is_what_went_wrong_with_the_launch_insider/

One thing that is suspicious is him saying to use the serial numbers as proof. I'm not sure what method MS uses for serial number batches these days, but at least in the Xbox 360 days I'm fairly sure they used serial numbers for their hardware that were generated using algorithms that were definitely not uniform.
 
The bolded seems like something that should be verifiable--is this in fact how manufacturing works? IE, under normal circumstances, would we expect all Xbox controllers included in this type of hardware bundle to have similar serial numbers?
It's possible, but if they're all jumbled up I don't think that proves anything tbh.
 

LaneDS

Member
I have such a hard time believing that they wouldn't just opt to ship without the XB1 controllers (which I'd bet a lot of money that most early adopters could give a shit about) until they could clear up any allocation woes. Seems like an awfully bad reason to flub their launch and get all this backlash over.
 
They were probably promised an allocation from a third party and that third party under delivered, leaving them with a shortage issue.

It happens but I do think Oculus' inexperience played a part.

There is a person on reddit who claims to be an insider saying it was the Xbox One Controller and wireless adapter.

Honestly, while I know people are already calling BS on the Xbox One controller as being the reason, it does make sense. After all, like most people here, Oculus probably assumed that of all the components making up the Oculus Rift package that the common as dirt controller and dongle wouldn't be something that would be hard to source (especially if Microsoft promised them they would make a specific allocation available).
 
If that Reddit post is true, Rifts preorder count has exceeded my expectations. I was expecting 300k over 3-4 months of sales. That much on day one is actually quite good for VR's future.
 
I have such a hard time believing that they wouldn't just opt to ship without the XB1 controllers (which I'd bet a lot of money that most early adopters could give a shit about) until they could clear up any allocation woes. Seems like an awfully bad reason to flub their launch and get all this backlash over.

The explanation in the Reddit post makes sense to me--Oculus doesn't really recommend playing with a KB&M, so shipping without a controller would be shipping with an incomplete product. Plus, it would make it clear that Microsoft was at fault, and they probably want to maintain a good relationship with MS.
 

LaneDS

Member
The explanation in the Reddit post makes sense to me--Oculus doesn't really recommend playing with a KB&M, so shipping without a controller would be shipping with an incomplete product. Plus, it would make it clear that Microsoft was at fault, and they probably want to maintain a good relationship with MS.

As someone impacted by this delay, I'd be a lot more forgiving of them just saying that and shipping without a controller (I'd love to see a show of hands of people that bought on day one that don't have a 360/XB1/PS3/PS4 controller for their PC) with the promise of the controller coming later.

That, and we're already well accustomed to controllers coming later with Oculus.
 

tenchir

Member
Oculus is obviously new at this so what likely happened is that they don't have multiple sources for this component that they are short of, so they are pretty much at the mercy of this component supplier. It's even worse if this component that they are short of is customized and is only produced from one source.

I don't think it's either the XBONE controller or receiver that is the shortage since they have months in advance to receive their shipments from MS. It has to be one of the customized parts that makes the HMD.
 

tenchir

Member
Oculus don't put together the HMD themselves also. They have outside manufacturer like Foxconn who puts together the HMD for them. Oculus won't know if they are short on components until the manufacturer tells them there is a problem. If the manufacturer is in charge of the logistic of getting component parts from other suppliers, then Oculus themselves probably can't do much except locating another source for that component and cover the possible added cost.
 

Raonak

Banned
Xbox wireless adapter does make some sense as it would explain why they were caught off guard with it.
MS's production pipeline for wireless adapters must be pretty much nonexistent considering the product is so niche.

And MS being a consumer facing company would be under fire a lot more than random manufacturers.
 

SpikeDaPenguin

Neo Member
Mine got delayed all the way to the beginning of June. At this point I might as well want them to delay it further so that I can purchase the Oculus Touch to ship with it *shrug*.

That being said, the wait doesn't bother me anymore. I'll get it when I get it. I see this as some necessary growing pains so that the Rift 2 will ship more smoothly.
 
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