We won’t know what the Rift will cost until preorders go live.
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Oculus has announced, via its official blog, that it will be opening up pre-orders for the Oculus Rift starting on Wednesday. “Touch will ship in the second half of the year and will unlock entirely new interactions that let people take their VR experiences further than ever before”. Since then, though, the company has singularly failed to actually launch its much-anticipated commercial VR headset, instead concentrating on its developer kit hardware.
After months of speculation, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is officially available for pre-order – but it will set you back US$599. And this year at least 20 games are expected to be available at the Oculus Store. We’re also yet to hear a solid release date for the headset. Backers will receive EVE: Valkyrie and Lucky’s Tale bundled with their special edition Rift headset. In 2014, Facebook acquired the start-up for $2 billion, in what was seen as a big boost to virtual reality. Moreover, thanks to Microsoft’s support, an Xbox One controller is tossed into the package, with an Oculus remote, a VR sensor and of course, the headset itself.
But people aren’t very excited about the price tag.
Oculus CEO Palmer Luckey will field questions-and likely many complaints about the Rift’s price-during an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit at 9 p.m. ET tonight.
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“It’s just the reality that when you make this thing, you have to decide what trade-offs you’re going to make”, Luckey told RoadToVR.com in an interview from October 2015.
