Following the rift launch for the past weeks, I am not longer sure about Oculus’ future:
The order process: What a mess. Starting with a missing comma in the price (how the **** can that happen?) in a non functional shop system, missing confirmation e-mails, no order status and so on. Wow.
The shipping delays. Do they really dont start production until after the preorders arrive? Huh? They don’t test the process upfront, building up stock… oh man.
Now the disturbing high rate of defects! Wtf is qoing on there? You read about dead rifts and stuck pixels everywhere!
The overwhelmed support with much to high turn-around times and ridiculous answers (such as work on genereating return label being in progress for days…). One is tempted to ask what is actually overwhelming the support: With those few rifts out until now…
Now the new software release, at least fixing the most embarrassing bugs (such as the only c-drive issue). But even then it is fixed only half heartenly, as it still seems not to be possible to have game libraries on different drives independend from where the oculus software is installed. However- people trying to download the software cannot easily find it. Which is why now the anger over this crappy homepage takes over. It really is a mess, being a webdev myself there is no other way to name it and no excuse to it.
Finally now the comments of Palmer Luckey, who after quite a few days of absence seems to have left his buddy-attitude at home, now ranting rude and sarcastic comments towards the folks. Whereas it is worth another remark alone, that the Oculus folks are posting on reddit instead of running an own support forum in a professional manner.
All this hits the people while they are also eagerly awaiting Touch controllers and now have fears of running into the same mess and trouble once again with the Touch release! What if touch doesn’t release in time or doesnt release for CV1 at all? What if quality and support is just as poor as right now with the Rift CV1? Even if you’re lucky enough to get a functional Rift, you’d still be stuck with only half the experience, as I would assume that the vast majority of users also has signed up for touch controllers and is hoping to get a similar experience as the Vive now provides out of the box.
It is just that you simply wouldnt expect any of this from a multi-million dollar Facebook owned high tech company that seemingly has just managed to develop and produce a superb VR headset. I wouldnt hardly be suprised if hardware quality turns out to be the next problem.
This all combined with the latest comments of Palmer denying those website problems, it is no suprise for people simply losing trust in Oculus, especially when they have set their mind and hopes on a rift combined with touch controllers.
Ah- and not to forget those privacy issues / objections with background processes!
Calling a quit on all this and just ordering a Vive just now is completely reasonable: Most likely it would still arrive earlier than the average first 24 hours rift preorder, it would have motion controls included and up to now defective units do not seem to be a problem, either.
My message to Oculus would be, if they know of any hardware quality issues, they’d do themself a favour by stop shipping asap and fixing those problems first. Maybe they’d have to give the touch controllers out for free for those affected by another delay as an excuse. But whatever they do - if now arises any bad press about the rifts hardware quality, they’re done. Simple as that.
I am excited to see how this thing evolves. Until now, this launch is about as fubar as it gets.
Will Oculus manage to sort it out or will they foxtrott uniform completely?