It’s strange to think that we’ve been talking about the Oculus Rift for three years now and it still hasn’t been released, not that I’m complaining. Virtual reality is a new field and Oculus VR is the de facto “face of the industry” at the moment, so I want the company to spend as much time developing the Oculus Rift as it needs to. That being said, the company has finally given us a date to expect the consumer version of its long-awaited virtual reality headset.
The first virtual reality headset to make waves finally has a full release date. The Oculus Rift headset will be available as a full product at retail during the first quarter of 2016, its maker Oculus VR announced Wednesday morning. Oculus VR hasn’t released a price or exact release date for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift, only promising it will ship with “compelling content, a full ecosystem, and a fully-integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality.” The Oculus Rift was first revealed as a Kickstarter project in August 2012, raising more than $2.4 million dollars by offering $300 kits directly to developers interested in virtual reality. Creator Palmer Luckey, a few months before, wrote on an online message board: “Really excited about this, I think it could be the kind of thing that jumpstarts a bigger VR community.” And Oculus VR did just that. After receiving a few rounds of funding, the company was purchased by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. Through all this, the company still only sold Oculus Rifts as development kits to those interested in creating experiences for virtual reality.
