The Oculus Rift became available for pre-order yesterday to the tune of $599 before taxes and shipping costs, which is a far cry from the Oculus Rift's DK 2 price which was $350.
In an AMA over on Reddit, Oculus CEO Palmer Luckey apologized yesterday for the sudden increase in price, saying that their failure to communicate properly resulted in the public outcry over the higher than expected price tag. Luckey continued on to say that the $350 price tag was for the DK2 and that the ballpark figure he gave at Oculus Connect was in comparison to the PC Ready bundle. People took that to mean, despite some recent efforts by Luckey to state it would be more expensive, that the price would be much closer to the $350 price range. He apologized for not effectively communicating the price of the device, which resulted in people setting their expectations too high. Mark Zuckerburg, who owns Oculus, has said that one of the reasons why the price got a markup was because the package included a controller in addition to a better working headset, which contradicts Luckey's own statement that the controller itself costs them next to nothing to include.
Because a lot of the time people spend with the Rift is used to watch video or VR experiences, the Oculus Store has a video section where you can buy and view feature films from companies partnered with Oculus. The Oculus Rift will also be able to run apps from sources other than their own store, making it more open than the Playstation VR.
The Oculus Rift will ship with an Oculus Remote, which can be used to navigate VR experiences easily if a gamepad isn't up to the task, or if you're not used to using a regular controller.
If you're a developer using one of the devkits, you don't have to worry about your headset becoming obsolete. Oculus wants to make sure that the people developing for the Rift with the DK and DK2 headsets will continue to be able to develop for the rift. Oculus will have more info on the compatibility in the future. The 1.0 Rift SDK will be made available to all developers at launch.
Customers who bought into the headset's Kickstarter campaign will get a free consumer version of the headset to replace the devkit they already own. Backers who want to take advantage of this offering can fill in an address form to receive the new headset. If you don't happen to live in one of the 20 launch countries, Oculus will be “working on an alternative”.
Oh and by the way, if you like your VR experiences a little more sexy, then Naughty America has got you covered! What a time to be alive.
