Oculus Pushes Back Touch Controller Launch To Second Half Of 2016

Sometimes timing creeps up on you and you have to move things back. It’s an ugly reality for hardware creators, but it happens.

Today, Oculus announced that its Touch controllers will be shipping in the second half of 2016 instead of immediately with the Rift, which is still coming in Q1 2016 with preorders coming “soon.”

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey tweeted a link to a blog post from the company, positioning things around the importance of “getting it right” rather than merely getting it out there:

As we wrote in June, the Touch controller, known as the “Half Moon” prototype, will let you pick up objects, fire a gun, or point at things while in a virtual reality experience with the Rift.

Here’s the full post:

On the path to perfecting Touch, we’ve decided that we need more time before release, and we’ll now be shipping Touch in the second half of 2016. Pre-orders will open a few months prior to launch.

Rift remains on schedule to ship in Q1 with pre-orders launching very soon.

On Touch hardware, we’ve made significant advances in ergonomics, and we’re implementing many changes that make Touch even more comfortable, reliable, and natural. We’re also implementing changes that improve hand pose recognition.

We’re also outputting larger numbers of pre-production runs, which means we can get a lot more Touch hardware in the hands of developers who need it.

There will be a huge amount of ground-breaking new content launching alongside Touch. We shared a handful of early previews at Oculus Connect 2 in September, but we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

The feedback on Touch has been incredibly positive, and we know this new timeline will produce an even better product, one that will set the bar for VR input. We appreciate your patience and promise Touch will be worth the wait.

Pre-orders will open a few months before the Touch controllers are slated to ship.