Sales began early this morning, and while the first batch of headsets is due to ship late March, the date for new customers has now been pushed back to May.
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And, popular Oculus will stay, as the Rift headset was just released today for preorder. You’ll also get the Oculus Remote which can be used to easily browse the Oculus store, watch 360 video content, and play certain VR games.
The $599 package will include the VR headset itself which will have built-in headphones and microphone, in which the development kits lack.
However, Luckey defended the higher price when talking to Variety, saying that the company wouldn’t have been able to ship the device with comparable display technology for less.
On February, Oculus will also offer bundles that include the VR headset and an Oculus-ready gaming PC with a starting price of $1,499. You can also run a diagnostic on the company’s website to see if your computer is compatible before pre-ordering it.
$599 is more than many VR enthusiasts expected the Oculus Rift to cost.
In the meantime, the consumer Rift will ship with with the XBox One wireless controller. In April, it will start selling the device “in limited locations at select retailers”, according to the Oculus blog.
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Two games will be included free of charge, Lucky’s Tale, a Super Mario-like game and Eve: Valkyrie, a space dogfighting game. Oculus Studios expects to roll out 20 of its own games this year, including a virtual reality version of Rock Band and the action-adventure game Edge of Nowhere.
