Oculus Rift will set you back £500 in March/April
Pre-orders for the Oculus Rift VR headset are now open, and if you want one when the device launches on March 28 you'll have to pay out £500 / $600 / €700.
Our first thought was that there was quite a price discrepancy between the North American and UK/Euro prices, and others obviously felt the same. Responding to questions on Twitter Oculus creator Palmer Luckey explained it thus:
"International Rift prices are not artificially bloated - we have to cover the required taxes, sales tax in USA works differently."
If you don't baulk at the price, £500 will get you a headset and sensor, an Oculus Remote, cables, an Xbox One controller, plus copies of EVE: Valkyrie and Lucky's Tale.
The device will be shipped out to the first round of customers on March 28, and the headset will be appearing in selected retailers from April. Of course before making an investment, it's also worth checking if your PC can handle the demanding hardware (see below for the official specs).
Many were expecting a lower price point with Oculus hoping to get the headset into as many hands as possible. The question is now whether the steep price will put off prospective buyers.
Can your gaming rig handle Oculus Rift? If not the company are promising to offer "Oculus Ready" PC bundles starting at $1500 - although there's no word on European prices as yet. In the meantime, here's the recommended specs:
Graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
Operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
Finally, the Rift is initially shipping to twenty countries. Here's the list: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States.
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