You can now pre-order the Oculus Rift before it ships in March

The virtual reality market didn’t begin with Google Cardboard and its derivatives, because it hasn’t actually begun at all. Those cheap headsets were more like the heralds of the true birth of the virtual reality market, which will be happening in March when the Oculus Rift launches. The device is not only the de facto face of the market, it’s going to be one of the first high-end virtual reality headsets to hit the market. You can pre-order it now for $600, and it’ll ship with the headset and its required cables, an Oculus Remote, an Xbox One controller, and a couple of free games.

The biggest name in VR is a step closer to reality. Oculus unveiled the final price for its hotly anticipated Rift headset along with a more precise window for its release: $599 in March 2016. The company began taking pre-orders on its website Wednesday morning, though most prospective buyers were met with a blank white page there, as the site got hammered by early adopters. The steep asking price isn’t totally out of the blue — Oculus CEO Palmer Luckey has in the past gone on record noting that the headset would certainly cost more than $350 — but it’s bound to induce some sticker shock to the hordes of gamers and techies eager to step into VR. According to Mr. Luckey, pre-orders will only be charged when the product ships. The $599 price includes the Rift headset and cables, an Oculus Remote, an Xbox One controller, and two free games: the awesome space-dogfighter Eve Valkyrie and the impressive platformer Lucky’s Tale. Equally notable is what that price doesn’t include. Those incredible Touch controllers that allow Rift wearers (Rifties? Rifters?) to grasp and manipulate virtual objects with their fingers have been bumped back to the second half of 2016.