Free Oculus Rift To Be Given To Original Dev Kit Backers

Second, the first batch of pre-orders will ship as early as the 28 of March and some purchasers are reporting their ship dates as late at May.

Kickstarter backers will receive a form they’ll need to fill out before February 1, 2016 in order to claim their special-edition Rift.

What the announcement of pre-orders also signals is that Oculus could end up beating the HTC Vive to market after all. According to the head honchos from Oculus, you’ll be getting your very own Rift headset as a thank you from the developers.

Oculus announced that pre-orders for its much-anticipated virtual reality headsets will be made available today and that those who backed the Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign in the beginning will get a free headset. The gadgets should ship out in March 2016. For a select lucky few, a full Oculus Rift experience will be winging its way into their very prescient hands.

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey will also be conducting a Reddit AMA on Wednesday at 6 p.m. PT to answer questions about the release. “People ask about Touch+Rift discount – Everyone with Touch needs a Rift, consider discount built into price of the subsidized Rift hardware”. Plus the two games of course. Oculus, which Facebook bought in 2014 for $2 billion, began accepting preorders for the device on Wednesday night. Pre-orderers will also get a copy of EVE: Valkyrie, a outer-space dogfight game that has also been a constant presence at Oculus’ demos over the years. The delay was decided upon to give time to “perfect” the Touch peripheral, despite the “incredibly positive” feedback of testers so far.