Oculus Rift Gets its Retail Price and Release Date

As expected, the launch of pre-orders for the Oculus Rift has revealed when the virtual reality headset will start reaching consumers, as well as how much they will have to pay for it. The first orders will ship out by March 28.

What the announcement of pre-orders also signals is that Oculus could end up beating the HTC Vive to market after all. Oculus Rift DK2 was one of the first VR headsets to support SteamVR.

The shopping cart on Oculus VR’s storefront indicates a $599 price tag and a expected ship date of March 2016.

Some users are reporting payment problems at the moment, with the system not taking their payment details.

The Oculus Rift purchase screen. Oculus also said it will sell Rift through some retailers in April.

If you backed the Oculus Rift’s Kickstarter campaign back in 2012 and received the DK1 model of the Rift, you won’t need to put any money down on the headset. That’s in addition to costs associated with a PC that can keep pace with the Oculus Rift’s demands on hardware.

On February, Oculus will also offer bundles that include the VR headset and an Oculus-ready gaming PC with a starting price of $1,499.

Over 20 other games are being worked on for the Oculus, launching exclusively this year.

For more information, or to pre-order, visit the official Oculus page.

The Rift will include the headset with built-in headphones and mic, sensor, and an Xbox One controller. Valkyrie is a space dogfighting game, putting players in the cockpit of their own virtual intergalctic ship, while Lucky’s Tale is a platformer game reminiscent of Super Mario Bros and Banjo-Kazooie.