You can now buy the Oculus Rift with Oculus Touch for the amazingly low price of $399! (Normally they are $599.) This is just a limited time offer not a permanent price decrease. (No, I don’t get a commission out of this in case you’re wondering.)
The purchase includes the Oculus Rift (with an Xbox One controller for gamepad-based games), the Oculus Touch, and these games:
1. Robo Recall – sci-fi action where you take on an army of robots; one of the best VR games I’ve played.
2. Lucky’s Tale – platformer in VR
3. Dragon Front – card-based strategy / battle game
4. Quill – draw in 3D space. Similar to Tiltbrush but more detailed
5. Medium – sculpt in 3D space
6. Dead & Buried – a sci-fi / fantasy / western shooter
7. Toybox – a physics-based playground
(Note: there are many other free apps and games for Oculus Rift).
At this price, it’s actually now the most affordable desktop VR system, and actually costs less than a Playstation VR (which costs $399 but needs a PS4 camera and controllers) and is just half of the cost of an HTC Vive ($799). At this price, I’m almost tempted to get another one to play with my kids…. hmmm.
In case you’re not familiar with these desktop VR systems, the Oculus Rift is similar to the HTC Vive, except that it is cross-compatible with games for both the Rift and the Vive (the Vive can play some Rift games but not others). Both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive provide true roomscale VR and are much more immersive than a Playstation VR. (I had the HTC Vive for several months and I still have the Rift and PSVR, so no I am not biased.)
Besides their capabilities, what I like best about the Oculus Rift is the software. The Rift has the VR games that I like best among all the systems such as Robo Recall, the Unspoken, Superhot VR, Dead and Buried, and other very polished games.
Before buying an Oculus Rift, you need to make sure your PC can run it. The requirements are actually not as steep as they once were, thanks to Oculus’ “asynchronous spacewarp,” which lets VR run on lower end machines. You’ll need:
Intel i5-4590 or better processor
8GB of RAM
NVidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB or better
You can buy a PC with an Intel i5-4590 and 8GB of RAM for around $250 – see here if you don’t believe me 🙂 (make sure it has an available PCI slot) and the GTX 1050 Ti 4GB for $150, for a total of just $400, the same price as a Ps4 Pro. And yes it really can play games without problems (see these demos).
Besides playing VR, a VR-capable PC will also be much faster at stitching and rendering 360 videos.
If you’ve ever thought about getting a desktop VR system, I think this is the best deal you will find anywhere.
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