Oculus VR Launches Pre-orders for the Rift, Priced at $599
Facebook-owned Oculus VR already began taking pre-orders for the Oculus Rift Consumer Edition virtual reality headset starting Wednesday. Oculus VR, which Facebook purchased in 2014 for $2.5 billion, started taking the pre-orders at 8am Pacific Time on Jan. 6 over the Oculus web site, with the VR headset’s price set at $599.
Because of the delayed launch of the Oculus Touch motion controller for the Rift, pre-order boxes of these VR headsets will include a Microsoft Xbox One controller in lieu of the Touch. In addition, consumers will also receive two bundled games for free: CCP Games’ space combat shooter EVE Valkyrie and Playful’s platform adventure game, Lucky’s Tale. Later on consumers will be able to purchase the Oculus Touch, a controller worn on your hands, that lets you physically see your hand in a virtual space. However, no specific dates on the Touch’s availability has been released yet.
The pre-order for the headset is a big deal for Oculus, since its fans starting from its Kickstarter supporters have been in the long queue for the much-awaited virtual reality headset for the past three years. As the Rift’s price was already announced, many VR folks had some kind of “sticker shock” with the relatively steep price tag. Many expressed their opinions over Twitter, with some saying that they have lost interest in buying the consumer-version Rift for its price.
Palmer Luckey admitted his mistake on Wednesday evening in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session regarding the expected pricing for the said VR headset. “I handled the messaging poorly,” he told the sprawling internet forum. “Our biggest failing was assuming we had been clear enough about setting expectations … I apologize. I was frustrated by how many people thought that was the price of the headset itself. My answer was ill-prepared, and mentally, I was contrasting $349 with $1,500, not our internal estimate that hovered close to $599 — that is why I said it was in roughly the same ballpark.”
For more information on the Oculus Rift, please visit the following websites:
http://www.virtualrealitytimes.com/2016/01/03/oculus-touch-launch-delayed/
http://www.virtualrealitytimes.com/2016/01/03/oculus-rift-free-vr-games/
http://www.virtualrealitytimes.com/2015/11/22/oculus-arcade-vr-app/