Oculus VR missed its mark in failing to open up preorders for its namesake headset before the close on 2015. On the last day of last year, the company announced that the virtual reality headset’s touch controllers have been delayed, but it still maintains that the Oculus Rift’s release is still on the rails.
(Photo : Oculus VR)
While its path to perfecting Touch is a bit longer than anticipated, Oculus VR on New Year’s Eve stated that its virtual reality headset remains on schedule to ship in the first quarter of 2016. The company said to expect the launch of pre-orders to be very soon.
The feedback on Touch has been incredibly positive, and we know this new timeline will produce an even better product, one that will set the bar for VR input, Oculus VR stated. We appreciate your patience and promise Touch will be worth the wait.
Game Day
Someone’s dad or grandpa might have said a platformer wouldn’t work, if VR had taken off the first time around instead of making everyone disoriented and seasick. Apparently the developers of made-for-VR platformer Lucky’s Tale have found reasons for whatever logic lies behind the arguments of the naysayers.
Playful’s Lucky’s Tale is a Conker-like 3D platformer that gives players god-like views and controls over a fun-loving fox in a charming game world. Filled with puzzles and platforms, Lucky’s Tale is packed with adventure and it’s fun to play, according to Oculus VR founder and CEO Palmer Luckey.
We always believed there was an opportunity for platformers in VR, but it wasn’t until playing Lucky’s Tale and working with the Playful team that we truly realized its potential to change how people view this genre of gaming forever,
Along with space dogfighter Eve Valkyrie, it’ll be tossed into Oculus VR branded boxes next to Xbox one controllers as freebies to accompany Oculus Rift headsets. They’re true freebies due to the way Facebook and Oculus VR are pricing the headsets.
Pricing
While Facebook and Oculus VR aren’t quite ready to reveal a price of the Rift, Luckey suggested that it’ll cost more than the $350 developer’s kit.
You know, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, Luckey said in an interview back in September. We’re roughly in that ballpark… but it’s going to cost more than that. And the reason for that is that we’ve added a lot of technology to this thing beyond what existed in the DK1 and DK2 days.
While $350 may be too low, $1,000 seems to be too high. Elaborating on the Rift’s pricing on Twitter recently, Luckey stated that Oculus VR has the backing of Facebook and doesn’t need an immediate hardware profit.
A company that has to survive on immediate hardware profit would have to hit with a much higher price – think $1000+. Not greed, reality, he tweeted. 1st gen VR users are being heavily subsidized by major players who want VR business to grow, though few seem to understand that.
Rift Ready
So with a ballpark figure on price and a general launch window and a pair of killer apps, now is the time to make sure those rigs are ready for the second coming of VR.
Here’s what you’ll need:
GPU: NVidia GTX 970 or AMD 290 equivalent or greater
CPU: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core*
RAM: At Least 8GB
Video Output: HDMI 1.3 output
USB Ports: Three USB 3.0 ports and One USB 2.0 port
OS Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
*This processor wasn’t specifically recommended by Oculus VR, but it has slightly higher benchmarks than a 3.3 GHz Intel i5-4590