I'm thinking it will all be fine. And maybe Dan can snag one of the new "dk2" dev kits that HTC is giving out to see what support is like for Vive and get that ready. HTC also announced preorders the end of Feb with retail starting in April. What they didn't say is if preorders will fill before the retail stuff starts but I think they would. So maybe March for hands on with Vive but that's just a guess.
Palmer also said "a few months" on the Rift so they sound like March deliveries too. They still haven't released the 1.0 SDK so there is going to be some time needed in the Oculus camp to get ready for retail too. It could be close to a simultaneous launch or pretty close between the two companies.
As much as I wanted to get hold of one of them in time for the holiday, it would also be a step back in some ways. With higher resolution and frame rates, I'd have to turn down settings in FSX and P3D to run either of them. I'm really curious about the higher frame rates and what that does to FlyInside flying, but turning down settings means less autogen and a less rich environment to fly in. It's a mixed bag for now.
What I'm looking forward to is the one-two punch of the retail HMD versions and even more GPU power with either SLI actually happening or the new upcoming AMD and Nvidia GPUs. And we still need Dan to work in support for the new HMDs before we can use them.
If I had been able to snag a Vive I'm afraid it would be just sitting there for a while anyway only being able to be swapped in and used for demos occasionally until we got more support going for flying.