The price is significantly higher than the $350 developers were charged for prototype units and $300 Kickstarter backers paid to test the kits.
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The cost of virtual reality: Expensive.
After months of speculation, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is officially available for pre-order – but it will set you back US$599. For the enthusiasts, these include titles like EVE: Valkyrie, a spaceflight and space combat simulator. A few minutes after an earlier screenshot, the expected ship date changes to April 2016.
The Oculus Rift itself goes up for pre-order tomorrow, January 6, however, still don’t know its price.
Of those familiar, 25 percent were able to name the Oculus Rift, 21 percent named the Samsung Gear VR and 20 percent named the PlayStation VR.
If you backed the original Oculus Rift Kickstarer, you can receive a free limited edition consumer edition at launch. According to Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey, Oculus Rift is being sold at a loss, despite its bloated price tag. The VR headset maker has chose to give out Kickstarter Edition Oculus Rift VR headsets to initial backers for free. And if Oculus had decided for a cheaper headset, it would have risked turning people off VR altogether, he argued.
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Starting in February, Oculus will let people preorder a Rift headset along with a PC that will work with it; these will start at $1,499. “And before we open Rift pre-orders to the world, we wanted to share one more special update with you, our Kickstarter community”, reads an update on the Kickstarter page.
