It's Finally Happening: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders Start Wednesday

By Kevin Carbotte
published

Palmer Luckey recently teased that pre-orders for the incredibly highly anticipated Oculus Rift VR HMD will start up shortly after the new year. Little did we know how true that would turn out to be.

Oculus has updated its website this morning with a countdown to the moment of truth. There is less than 48 hours left until you can throw down your money and get in line for a Rift HMD.

Oculus will open pre-orders for the Rift on Wednesday January 6 at 8am Pacific. We still don't know the price of the package, but we do know that it will include the Rift HMD, an Xbox One controller and one base station for spacial tracking. Each Rift will come bundled with Lucky's Tale, a third person platformer game, and all pre-orders will include CCP's EVE: Valkyrie.

Oculus has also announced that Palmer Luckey will be doing an Ask-Me-Anything session on Reddit at 6pm Pacific on January 6, so if you have any questions about the forthcoming VR hardware, you can ask the inventor of the Rift himself.

With pre-orders opening this week, it stands to reason that we'll finally be getting the complete specifications of the headset. Stay tuned for more details as we uncover them at CES 2016.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jaber2
    Woot, can't wait to get my hands on one
    Reply
  • overgrower
    What day are they going to show the big breakthrough for the htc vive ?
    Reply
  • Jake Hall
    How wonderful this is! So.... can I just plug this thing in, and play Far Cry with it?
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    What day are they going to show the big breakthrough for the htc vive ?

    can't reveal when yet, but we'll have the news up as soon as we can.

    How wonderful this is! So.... can I just plug this thing in, and play Far Cry with it?

    Oculus Rift has specific games that are designed for it. It won't work with already released games without a special driver, but even then its not really designed to do that.
    the best experiences for VR are build from the ground up with VR in mind
    Reply
  • DrakeFS
    How wonderful this is! So.... can I just plug this thing in, and play Far Cry with it?

    Unless the developer or the mod community step up, any games released before 2016 will not be a proper VR experience . Even with developer or mod support, I expect any game "converted" to VR would be lacking vs a game designed for VR.
    Reply
  • ammaross
    How wonderful this is! So.... can I just plug this thing in, and play Far Cry with it?

    Unless the developer or the mod community step up, any games released before 2016 will not be a proper VR experience . Even with developer or mod support, I expect any game "converted" to VR would be lacking vs a game designed for VR.

    Even just the ability to "look behind you" in an FPS without changing the direction of your running direction (or gun) would be of benefit. However, if you think about current FPSes, you can see why free head movement is not compatible with how they're written.
    Reply
  • Realist9
    "...we do know that it will include the Rift HMD, an Xbox One controller and one base station for spacial tracking"
    Um..no. What's the price without the Xbone controller I don't need and will never use. Those things are like $50-$60, right? No thanks.
    Drop the price (whatever it is) by $50 and keep the useless controller please.
    Reply
  • overgrower
    What day are they going to show the big breakthrough for the htc vive ?
    Reply
  • JackNaylorPE
    How wonderful this is! So.... can I just plug this thing in, and play Far Cry with it?

    Assuming you have the hardware .... if ya happy with 30 fps on screen, you'll want 90ish on the OR.

    Even just the ability to "look behind you" in an FPS without changing the direction of your running direction (or gun) would be of benefit. However, if you think about current FPSes, you can see why free head movement is not compatible with how they're written.

    Can do that now pretty much with a Head Mouse ... my son uses this for flight equipped games
    http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/
    http://www.thehumansolution.com/naturalpoint-trackir-5.html
    Reply
  • Joe Black
    Valkyrie! Yay! XD
    Reply