Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is over. All room for doubt has vanished. After months of demanding more solid data on the price and availability of the Oculus Rift, the folks at OculusVR confirmed both. The pre-order system is so saturated that it already points to June as the delivery month for some orders, while the official price became a controversy by surprising consumers with a figure well above what was originally estimated.
Well, I think my reasons for pressing OculusVR about prices and dates are exhausted (!). Personally, I approve of the decision for the simple fact that users will be able to determine precisely whether it is worth entering this first generation of virtual reality, or if it is better to wait a little longer. The Oculus Rift has shown its potential through a huge number of demos, and developers around the world pushed not one but two preliminary editions of the virtual headset to the limit. During its four-year life as a prototype we saw everything, from patches for existing games to the surprising purchase of OculusVR by Facebook. Today (technically yesterday) we reached the moment we all expected: the announcement of its debut as a general consumer product.
The complete package will include the headset, a camera to track your head, an Xbox One gamepad, the Oculus Remote for media control, all connection cables, a portfolio, and the two games we mentioned recently: EVE: Valkyrie and Lucky's Tale. The privileged few who managed to pre-order the Oculus Rift in the first minutes will receive it next March 28, but anyone entering the official page right now will find the headset is on "backorder" until June. The price of the Oculus Rift is $599 in the United States and €699 in Europe. To this we must add the average of a thousand dollars many interested parties will need to invest in hardware. OculusVR published a tool to check whether your computer's specifications are in order.
Needless to say, the Web did not stay silent upon learning the Rift's price, to the point that CEO Palmer Luckey apologized in an "Ask My Anything" he organized on Reddit for "assuming" they had been "sufficiently clear" when setting expectations about the price. The old $350 idea established by the DK2 turned into disappointment at the new price, which, in OculusVR's defense, is in line with many other "first generation" products. All secondary details will be clarified in March, when the first Rift headsets reach their owners and the competition adjusts its prices accordingly. For now... virtual reality is "premium."
