Oculus Touch Not Coming Before October, We’ll Learn More At Oculus Connect 3

By Kevin Carbotte
published

Oculus announced that it will host its third annual Oculus Connect conference this October in San Jose, California. The company said that OC3 will be the largest Oculus developer conference to date. The event will include more than 50 technical talks as well as keynote presentations from three of the company’s most prominent bigwigs: Brendan Iribe, Oculus CEO; John Carmack, Oculus CTO; and Michael Abrash, Oculus Chief Scientist.

In addition to the myriad talks about all things virtual reality, Oculus said that it will have “lots more to share about Touch” at Oculus Connect 3. We’ll hear more about the more than 30 launch titles that Oculus has planned for Touch, as well.

It’s refreshing to finally know when we’ll learn more about Touch--presumably its release date, although Oculus is still saying “later this year”--but this news will likely disappoint some customers. If Oculus is waiting until October to talk about the release date, we’re looking at a likely November to December launch window for the motion controllers. Oculus could still surprise us with an October release, but that seems unlikely at this stage.

Oculus Connect 3 will run October 5-7, 2016, at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, CA. Oculus will open applications to attend at 9am PST, August 2. To register, visit the Oculus Connect website.

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. 

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • David Dewis
    I love my Rift, but come on Oculus, get your s*#t together. Originally the controllers would launch with headset, then it was announced as autumn . Then my pre order was pushed back 2 months. Now it looks like it could be November/December until Touch launches, and that's still dependent on there being enough stock this time. If that happens again, it could be 2017 until I actually see any Touch controllers.
    Reply
  • John Nemesh
    Buy a Vive. It has motion controllers included, shipping NOW and supports Room Scale VR which Oculus does not! Oh, and it also doesn't include spyware.
    Reply
  • old_newbie
    Its more like "Not coming before December". I saw a Touch controller static display at the local Best Buy store this weekend and the placard read: "Touch - coming Winter 2016".
    Reply
  • Brandon_29
    I cancelled my Rift pre-order and kept my Vive one after Rift said it would be June for my day one hour one pre-order to ship. Best decision I have ever made. After using Vive touch and room scale there is no way I could go back to Rift. Plus the Vive plays all the rift games (which all suck because of no room scale, but hey it can still play them). Oculus ram rodded the old pooch with their entire release. I guess that is what happens when a no-name startup pairs with a social media site to release hardware. Probably the biggest hardware failure since the 3DO :)
    Reply
  • eldragon0
    Still most likely getting an Oculus. I only want to play mech/racing/flying games with it anyways, and frankly from the demo's touch is way better than vives move.
    Reply
  • Curttron
    All these people claiming that vive is superior, clearly you havn't looked at the differences. Especially when it comes to the controllers, Oculus Touch blows Vive controllers out of the water! just watch, enjoy your puny rushed vive hardware, while the real perfected patient customers get the top-notch hardware. Vive is just a rushed cash-in of non-perfected VR.
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    18438211 said:
    All these people claiming that vive is superior, clearly you havn't looked at the differences. Especially when it comes to the controllers, Oculus Touch blows Vive controllers out of the water! just watch, enjoy your puny rushed vive hardware, while the real perfected patient customers get the top-notch hardware. Vive is just a rushed cash-in of non-perfected VR.

    We'll see how it plays out soon enough, but I wasn't blown away by Touch when I tried it. It's different from the Vive controllers, but it wasn't a game-changing difference.
    Reply