It's a question that's been fresh in plenty of users' minds pretty much since they even heard about an Oculus Rift in the first place: when exactly is this thing coming out? A new report presents something like bad news for those who feel the waiting too sharply already, yet at the same time, a note of good news as well. Specifically, it's going to be a while before the Oculus Rift hits commercially, but there's a good reason for the extra wait.

Basically, the Oculus Rift's makers out at Oculus VR / Facebook are specifically working to make the device better-suited to the long haul, likely knowing that once wearers get the thing on it's going to take an act of Congress, God, or sheer hunger to get the thing back off again. Reports from Bloomberg suggest that the company is “really close” to a release, but that it's still going to be a few months as the product is ultimately refined and made as comfortable as possible.

It's not just a matter of comfort, though; the company is reportedly eager to make sure the product is also easy to use, right out of the box. That takes quite a bit of product testing, focus groups and the like to help ensure that the product not only works well immediately, but works after an hour's session, a three-hour session, and beyond. Finally, there's the issue of getting software around for it, because no peripheral can really offer a value without software. We need the Oculus-specific movies—though there's no telling just how well the current breed will stack up with this one—and games in order to make this as full and rich an experience as possible.

This comes as little relief for those who, by now, would be willing to crawl over broken glass to get hands on one of these things, but it's hard to fault Oculus for wanting to get the release just right. This is, after all, one of the biggest moves in video gaming yet, and it would be downright unforgivable not to get the release as precise as possible. This needs to be done just so, and just right, lest history look back on the era where virtual reality really got its start—leave aside all that “Dactyl Nightmare” nonsense—and say that it didn't go quite as well as it could have.

The Oculus Rift represents the start of a whole new enterprise: the start of a viable, home-based virtual reality system. This is a leap forward, and it's not surprising that a leap forward would take some time to accomplish. While it's a difficult process to wait—indeed, some of us have been waiting since the “Dactyl Nightmare” period for this to actually go according to plan—the waiting will likely prove not only necessary, but valuable. We're going to want this to work, and work right, right out of the box. Only time will tell if the waiting actually paid off, but it's a pretty safe bet that it will indeed.