Oculus Rift Will Cost $599, Ships in March with Pre-orders Starting Today

By Paste Staff | January 6, 2016 | 10:45am

Video Games News Oculus Rift

If you want to get in on the ground floor of Oculus Rift’s retail release, it’ll cost you $599. Pre-ordering opened up on Oculus’s site this morning, with a $599 price tag and a March release date for the first orders. It looks like the first shipment is sold out—if you click the pre-order button now, it gives you an estimated ship date of April 2016. For that $599 you get the retail edition of the company’s virtual reality headset, an Xbox One controller, the Oculus Remote and two games, the space flight combat game EVE VR and platformer Lucky’s Tale.

$599 sounds steep but experts have been predicting a high price point for the Rift’s commercial debut. Those six hundred bucks are on top of the costs of a PC capable of running current games; if you’re worried about whether your computer can handle the technology, that pre-order page can scan your computer and let you know.

Will the Oculus Rift finally establish virtual reality as a mainstream gaming option? That high price point will limit the possible audience, but presumably it will become more affordable over time. For now the early adopters need to prepare to open up their wallets if they want to strap their videogames to their faces.