Oculus Rift preorders open at $599; ship dates slip to May

Oculus Rift preorders opened at 8AM PST this morning via the Oculus Shop page at the price of $599/?499/ ?699. Preorder ship dates were initially set at March 2016 as previously discussed, but slipped to April, and finally May within a few hours.

As pictured, those who preorder the Rift will receive the following: headset, sensor, Oculus Remote, cables, Xbox One Controller, EVE: Valkyrie, and Lucky’s Tale.

Pricing was revealed at the time preorders went live, previously said to be upwards of $350 USD, somewhere “roughly in that ballpark,” according to this interview with Luckey. Many assumed the price would be within a $100 range above $350, based on dev kit pricing, but despite preorders staggering shipment dates two months out, the high price has been met with negative reaction from many.

Palmer Luckey has been responding on Twitter, acknowledging the costs and the price of a PC likely needed to run VR hardware at reasonable performance. The store page even includes a small tool for users to determine if their current PC can run the Oculus Rift, with a link to Oculus-ready PC’s for those who should upgrade..

European customers are met with additional taxes, alongside pricing which is more costly when compared to USD conversion rates:

A Reddit AMA is planned for 6PM PST for questions regarding the Oculus Rift. We’ll update with a link to the thread once it’s live.

UPDATE — The AMA is up with a link here.