Oculus Rift Priced at $599, Expected to Ship in March

The unit comes in at a $599 price tag which is on the high end of where we thought it would land, though Oculus insists that this hardware is heavily subsidized.

Oculus has announced that backers of its Kickstarter campaign will receive free sets of the consumer headset.

The announcement was made as Oculus Rift pre-orders were finally opened, with the headset now available to pre-purchase on the Oculus website. For this price, you get the Oculus Rift itself, an Xbox One controller, Oculus Remote and a sensor.

For those who need a PC to support the device, “Oculus Ready PCs” will be up for pre-order in February at $1499 and ship on March 28.

$599 is more than many VR enthusiasts expected the Oculus Rift to cost.

All those who preorder now will also have a spot to preorder the Oculus Touch controller, which has been delayed, when it is launched later this year. Oculus also said it will sell Rift through some retailers in April. What’s more, over 20 of those games will be exclusive to the Rift platform. “Users can also check whether their current PC meets specs right now with the new Oculus compatibility tool”. Oculus chief executive Brendan Iribe said in May that the Rift and the computer needed to run it were expected to cost around $1,500. Oculus, which Facebook bought in 2014 for US$2 billion, began accepting pre-orders for the device on Thursday. Presumably this will continue to slip as pre-orders build, so if you’re desperate for one this side of Christmas, you should put your money down sooner rather than later.