14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Oculus Rift working on virtual reality is announcing that the device it has been working on for the past few years, which bears the same name, is now available for pre-order for all interested customers and comes with an attached price of 599 dollars or Euro.
The information comes from the official site, which has just added the price tag; after having been kept under wraps for a long time, it represents one of the most important announcements of the year for the video game industry.
The Oculus Rift is expected to arrive for all those who are placing pre-order at some point during March, although no clear date has been mentioned, and there are also plans to offer it in a limited number of real world stores during the month of April.
The virtual reality device will be in short supply at launch, and the developers are saying that all those who are interested should try to place a pre-order to make sure that they secure one, revealing that they are only planning to charge the 599 dollars or Euro price when shipping takes place.
The package will include the headset itself, the remote, the required cables, an Xbox One controller, a sensor as well as access to Lucky's Tales and EVE Valkyrie, two video games designed to show the kinds of experience that VR can deliver.
According to the developers, gamers who want to use the Oculus Rift will have to run Windows 7 with SP1 64 bit on a machine that has at least an Nvidia GTX 970 or an AMD R9 290 or better graphics card, an Intel i5-4590 or better processor, 8 GB of RAM as well as an HDMI 1.3 video output that's compatible and 3 USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port.
Virtual reality will have to work hard to overcome the price issue
599 dollars or Euro is a lot to pay for a new piece of hardware, and it's easy to see why Palmer Luckey, the leader of the team working on the Oculus Rift, has decided to only reveal the cost once pre-orders are open, and launch date draws near.
Given the relatively low number of major titles that support virtual reality at the moment, it will be interesting to see how many gamers decide to pick one up and whether the install base will be high enough to support development in the future.
The Oculus Rift is facing competition from the Vive from HTC and Valve, which announced a new version with a front-facing camera and was delayed, and from the PlayStation VR solution Sony is preparing for the PlayStation 4.
Neither of the two rivals announced its price or launch date, but they will probably be somewhere over the 500 dollars or Euro mark and also lack a major video game to support them.
Microsoft is working on its alternate reality HoloLens solution as well, which can be used with both the Xbox One and PCs powered by Windows 10.