News regarding the Oculus Rift
From Road to VR:
Looks amazing! Oculus did a very nice job on the product design – note the cover plates for the HDMI and USB connection ports. The front face looks clean with everything integrated when the cover plates are installed. The over the head routing for the cables is also very sleek.
Yesterday Oculus community manager cybereality released a statement regarding the shipment of DK2.
Via Oculus’s forums and reddit:
The first batch of official DK2s have left the manufacturing facility and are making their way to our distribution centers now. We expect to ship roughly 10,000 DK2s from the factory in July, with just over half of the units through distribution centers and on their way to doorsteps before the end of the month. The very first units are expected to reach developers the week of July 14th. Tracking numbers for all DK2s will be generated as soon as the shipment has been processed by a distribution center.
Please take a moment to confirm that your shipping address is up to date via the Oculus Sales page (https://www.oculusvr.com/sales/). We’ll ship to the address on file, and if the information is incorrect, it may cause delivery delays. In the event that your payment information is no longer valid, you’ll receive an email prior to shipment with instructions on how to complete your payment.
We’re now over 45,000 DK2 pre-orders, which is incredibly exciting. That said, we’re slightly behind in manufacturing and there’s currently a high chance that some developers with estimated shipping in July may not have their DK2s shipped until August. We have a team in China working on continued ramp of production at our factory, and we’ll work our way through the queue as fast as we can.
Once your Development Kit 2 is ready for shipment, you’ll receive an email with a tracking number which can be used to see an estimated delivery date. Please do not contact Oculus support asking for a shipping estimate, as we do not know the status of your package until a tracking number has been generated.
We’ll continue to post status updates, so everyone can stay current on what’s going on behind the scenes. Thanks again for your continued support, and we hope everyone is excited to be begin working with DK2!
So it sounds like my DK2 will be pushed into fall, hopefully I’ll see it sometime in September.
The very first line of this statement is interesting:
The first batch of official DK2s have left the manufacturing facility and are making their way to our distribution centers now.
Apparently I am way off base and ill informed about Oculus’s distribution network. The following blurb was originally included with this article and is best described as nonfactual.
Without reading between the lines too much it sounds like the first batch of DK2s are in a sea container steaming across the Pacific. And that’s if we’re lucky and the container has already left China. Otherwise you’re looking at a minimum of 20+ days before the container hits US ports for domestic distribution. I’m guessing Oculus is using the US as their main distribution hub so orders outside of the US will lag further behind.
DK2 units should still reach early preorderers before August but shipment dates will realistically be in late July. Expectations should be tempered.