Oculus Rift showcased the customer version of its product at an event in San Francisco this Thursday.
Although important details like the final release date of the product or its price tag have not yet been revealed, but the device is already touted to be a very compelling virtual reality experience. Believe me.
Oculus Rift’s competitors in this fierce virtual-reality race have already taken ahead. Since the VR company was bought out by Facebook last year for a deal money of $2 billion, the various other market competitors like Sony and Valve have already pushed VR products that feel better designed and polished than the various Oculus Development kit products that have been released to the market in the previous years.
Even the mobile-phone based VR competitors like Samsung’s Gear VR and even the Google Cardboard have potentially undercut Rift on the competitive market and may even force them to reduce their prices at such time when they finally launch the device in mainstream.
These competitors have the potential to give most cash-starved consumers a good enough experience to seriously undermine Rift’s products.
Even with all this Oculus Rift remains one if not the biggest name in the virtual reality device industry. Therefore, the device will be one to watch out for. The details that are known of the device are few but here is all that we do know.
The final consumer version of the Oculus Rift will arrive in Q1 of 2016. Although no specific launch date has been given, this much has been confirmed by the company.
That is admittedly not much to go on, but it will still give those looking to scoop up the device enough time to gather anywhere between a $1000 to $2000 required for the headset and PC that would be able to handle the requirements of the Oculus Rift VR.
A satisfying virtual reality experience revolves mostly around being able to play great games on said device. Once the Rift comes out, developers will need time to develop great games for the platform.
In regards to this Rift’s partnership with Microsoft is an essential stopgap measure: while games exclusively designed for Rift’s VR platform may not be immediately available, the Xbox streaming functionality of Windows 10 will give users of the device the chance to stream Xbox games directly to their Rift device.
It is not an ideal arrangement, given Xbox games are not designed for an immersive VR system, playing Xbox games on the device will feel like playing the games on a home theater instead of a screen.
Of course there is also the fact that playing the games on Rift’s VR with Xbox One’s controller won’t feel good at all, so the company will also include a bundled Xbox One controller with Rift. Developers creating the first batch of Oculus Rift games will have a familiar input mechanism to design their games for, added to the fact that both HTC Vive supported by Valve and Sony’s Project Morpheus have similar handheld remote controls that are akin to wands.
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