The Oculus Rift pre-orders started today and finally the long awaited price point has been revealed. The launch day Oculus Rift will run consumers a total of $599 and will ship March 28th.
Despite a price that was more than anticipated, the Rift will come packaged with several goodies. As previously announced, the VR headset (with built-in headphones and mic) comes with the sensor, an Xbox One controller and two games: Lucky’s Tale and EVE: Valkyrie. But just newly added to rest of the package is the Oculus Remote, useful to easily navigating through the VR interface.
Those who pre-order the Rift will also get priority waiting list options for the Oculus Touch, the virtual reality controller unveiled at E3 last June. Oculus announced recently that the Touch wouldn’t be readily available at launch in order to make improvements on the device. Touch was pushed to the second half of 2016.
Running the Oculus Rift will need the following system requirements:
- graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
- processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
- memory: 8GB+ RAM
- output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
- input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
- operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
A compatibility tool is available for users to check if their current PC is VR ready. Oculus Ready PCs with Rifts will be available for pre-order in February starting at $1499 however those who pre-order the Oculus now will be eligible to receive an Oculus Ready PC at the special bundle price.
Regarding the initial outrage regarding the device’s high price Oculus found Palmer Luckey had this to say
Those wishing to obtain a pre-order can go to the Oculus Store. The Rift will also be available in limited locations at select retailers starting in April.