Last Wednesday, January 6, the much awaited Oculus Rift has gone on sale through pre-orders which will be shipped on March. The device that has gotten the interest of many VR enthusiasts is priced at $599.
According to Ars Technica, Oculus has locked down the release specifics for the first consumer version of the Rift virtual reality headset. The VR unit is now accessible for preorder ahead of expected shipments which will commence on March. Oculus stated that the headset will be available at limited retail locations starting in April.
As for the international prices, the following are listed on the Oculus Shop: £499 in the UK, €699 in mainland Europe, AUS$649 in Australia, NZ$699 in New Zealand, CDN$849 in Canada, ¥83800 in Japan, KOR$649 in South Korea.
International Business Times reported that each Oculus Rift preorder will include "EVE: Valkyrie" for free. Oculus formerly announced it will bundle the VR platformer "Lucky's Tale" with each headset.
Palmer Luckey, Oculus founder, has discussed all things about VR as part of a Reddit AMA Wednesday. As part of its preorder announcement, Oculus stated the company will be sharing everything buyers need to know in ordering the Rift.
Additionally, the report also stated potential hurdles that the buyers should be knowledgeable upon going virtual. Oculus announced in May 2015 the minimum requirements necessary to handle VR.
The recommended PC specification is an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290, Intel i5-4590, and 8GB RAM. It also requires rendering a standard 1080p game at 60HZ requires 124 million shaded pixels per second.
The Rift requires more pixels per second on two different displays, one for each eye an estimated to be around 400 million pixels per second.
Gizmodo added that the Oculus founder, himself, know that most of the folks willing to devote their money on VR will be gamers and tech enthusiasts for the next couple years. In addition to the headset, buying a PC capable of running Rift's VR software could easily set users back a grand on its own.
With the Oculus Rift now on sale via pre-order, tech enthusiats especially those who are into virtual reality innovations are advised to place their reservations now before the first batch sells out. Those who will order now will have the long awaited headset on their hands roughly two months from now.
