As promised, you can now preorder Oculus Rift, the company’s virtual reality headset, from shop.oculus.com. The price and timing have also been revealed: The Rift will set you back $599 and starts shipping on March 28. Oculus also plans to make the Rift available “in limited locations at select retailers starting in April.”
Rift preorders are only available in 20 countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Facebook-owned company says more countries will be added “over time.” Preordering the Rift will also secure a place in line for Touch preorders, which the company last month delayed to the second half of 2016.
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Oculus recommends the following PC specifications to use with the Rift (Mac users are out of luck):
- 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
In February, bundles that include an Oculus Ready PC and a Rift will be available for preorder. Pricing starts at $1,499.
Oculus Rift ships with two games, the third-person platformer Lucky’s Tale and the cockpit-simulating space fighter Eve: Valkyrie. Oculus Studios promises “more than 20 games” coming exclusively to Oculus this year, including Rock Band VR by Harmonix, Edge of Nowhere by Insomniac, and The Climb by Crytek.
Games aside, an Xbox One controller is also included with the headset, as are the built-in headphones, mic, sensor, and Oculus Remote.
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The Oculus Remote lets you browse the Oculus store, explore 360 video content in Oculus Video, and navigate VR games. Oculus claims it “is the easiest way to introduce non-gamers to VR.”
Oh, and the wireless adapter is also bundled within:
Wireless adapter is included with controller, forgot to mention in blog posts. Have at it, press people!
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) January 6, 2016
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If you were one of the thousands of people who got an Oculus Rift DK1 from the company’s original crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, you’re going to get the consumer version free. In other words, don’t spend $599 unless you want to have two units of the new gadget.
Rift was one of the earliest big successes on Kickstarter, with 9,522 backing a total of $2.437 million. Facebook then acquired Oculus in March 2014 for $2 billion.
Update: And, the initial batch has already sold out. The shipping timeframe has already been pushed back to May, meaning only a handful of preorders will arrive on March 28.
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