But, clearly, enough people are willing to jump in at that price because they believe in what Oculus is selling.
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The virtual reality headset revolution may be coming to homes soon, but it will have to come at a price some people might not be comfortable paying.
The announcement was made as Oculus Rift pre-orders were finally opened, with the headset now available to pre-purchase on the Oculus website. Players can expect over 100 titles to be available by the end of the year, including 20 exclusive titles.
The Rift headset will include built-in headphones and mic and come packaged with a sensor and an Xbox One controller. This barely scrapes the promised Q1 2016 release which is also pretty close to the expected release of the consumer version of the HTC Vive in April. For one thing, even if I did get an Oculus Rift, my PC doesn’t match up to the exacting specifications that the system demands.
Oculus is starting off the new year with a bang; the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is now up and ready for pre-orders.
When compared with other VR headsets priced by brands like Samsung (priced at $99), Lickey left a message on his Twitter “To reiterate, we are not making money on Rift hardware”.
There is, however, two free games bundled in under the $600 price tag: Lucky’s Tale and CCP Games’ acclaimed dogfighting sim EVE: Valkyrie. Oculus offers a downloadable tool for checking compatibility in its blog post announcing the Rift’s $599 price.
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$599 sounds steep but experts have been predicting a high price point for the Rift’s commercial debut.
