If you’ve been curious about jumping into virtual reality, but have been waiting for prices to drop, today is your day. Oculus has announced it’s dropping the price of the Oculus Rift headset and the Oculus Touch controllers by $100 apiece, meaning you can get both the Rift and Touch together for $599 — or, separately, the Rift headset for $499 and Touch controllers for just $99.
This is the first major price drop we’ve seen from the first generation of VR systems, and it’s a pretty significant one. The Rift’s main competitor, the HTC Vive, currently retails for $799. The PSVR, meanwhile, is $499 with two controllers and a camera included, but is undeniably underpowered when compared to the Rift or Vive.
The knock against the Oculus when it first launched in spring of 2016 was its lack of handheld controllers (players used an Xbox controller). But the Oculus Touch controllers, released late last year, feel better, and allow for a more natural range of hand motion than the HTC Vive’s wandlike controllers. With Oculus now aggressively undercutting the Vive on price, and no clear indication that either plans to release updated versions of their headsets in the near future, we may be seeing the beginnings of a price war.
You’ll still need to drop at least another $650 getting a PC that can handle the requirements of virtual reality, but this price drop for the Rift and Touch starts to put VR a little bit more in, uh, touch.
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