Oculus has announced that the shipping date for Oculus Rift dev kits has slipped from a December release to 2013.

“Designing, sourcing, and manufacturing thousands of developer kits is no small feat. Since our Kickstarter, we’ve been up against the wall, working around the clock to produce and distribute over 7500 units in just 4 short, crazy months. We’ve had to modify our original design for mass-manufacturing and, at the same time, balance additional features with our tight schedule,” explained Oculus boss Palmer Luckey. “In order to accommodate the required changes, new features, and manufacturing duration, we had to shift our ship date.”

Development kits will now begin shipping out from March 2013, with the hope being to have all kits sent out by mid-April 2013. “We’ll be shipping out the developer kits in the same order as the Kickstarter pledges were received (first come, first served). Based on this current schedule, the goal is to ship the majority of the rewards by mid-March,” he added.

“We may not have all 7500 kits in the first shipment, but we’ll continue shipping out kits as soon as they arrive. We’re estimating that we can have all the rewards sent out by mid-April. Any pre-orders taken post-Kickstarter are expected to ship in late April 2013, after we’ve delivered all the Kickstarter rewards.”