Oculus Rift distribution pushed back, shipping begins March 2013
Oculus Rift developer kits aren't shipping until March 2013. Kickstarter backers can expect to get their hands on one by mid-April, while those with pre-orders must wait until late April. Oculus originally expected to complete backer and pre-order deliveries by January 2013, but it turns out finalizing design, testing, and mass production of a VR headset takes a lot of time. You can get an idea of just how extensive the task is on Oculus' Kickstarter page, which depicts the process in detail.
As our friends at Engadget note, there are some signficant differences between the final dev kits and the prototypes first unveiled. There's now a 1280x800 7'' display as opposed to the original 5.6'' LCD, making the headset 30g heavier than it was before. Oculus says "the new display beats the old display in almost every key area including response time, switching time, contrast, and color quality," so an extra 30g is probably worth it.
