The Oculus Rift Is Here, And You Can Preorder It For $599

The launch day Oculus Rift will run consumers a total of $599 and will ship March 28th.

Pre-orders for the Oculus Rift went live today, revealing not only its price, but also how and when it will be available. Players can also download a compatibility tool before checking out to see if their Windows PC is capable of running Oculus or if upgrades will be required. After years of development, our virtual reality experience, Oculus Rift, is now available for pre-order!When you put…

The Rift’s $599 price tag is an abrupt reminder that this headset is not meant to be a peripheral, but rather something more like its own console. For now the early adopters need to prepare to open up their wallets if they want to strap their videogames to their faces.

The company, which was bought by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion, says the headsets will come with two video games, “Lucky’s Tale” by Playful and CCP’s “EVE: Valkyrie”. If you pre-order an Oculus Rift now, you’ll have to wait until May before it ships. The standard Rift bundle includes the headset with built-in headphones, microphone, sensor and an additional Xbox One controller. “Touch will ship in the second half of the year and will unlock entirely new interactions that let people take their VR experiences further than ever before”. Many developers have pledged support for the VR headset including: Insomniac Games, Square Enix, Harmonix, Ready at Dawn, and more. Or the headsets will each release with similar price points, in which case it seems likely that the plan for VR to break the mainstream will continue to be a long way off.