Oculus revealed a pair of new headsets earlier today which make their next generation wireless. Or nearly wireless, that is to say - they still need to be charged up with wires. Both the Oculus GO and the "Oculus Santa Cruz" are made to expand the VR universe to a new place - one that does not connect to the PC with a big fat cord, and one that does not require a separate smartphone to function.
This week the folks at Oculus cut the price of bundle packages for the Oculus Rift. The headset's price point is a permanent change, coming because the company suggests they want to "get VR into more people's hands." This comes a few months after Oculus Rift's main opposition - the HTC VIVE - got its own price drop to $599 - that's below the whopping $799 the device cost in the first place.
It appears that Oculus really wants to take the fight to HTC VIVE. The Oculus Rift has been on sale in a bundle with its Touch controllers for a few days now, dropping the package's price to $399 and severely undercutting the cost of a VIVE headset. Today, Oculus announced that the Rift will be getting a permanent price cut once the Summer of Rift sale wraps up.
It's proving to be a pretty excellent summer for VR. Not only did we see a rather tempting discount on the HTC VIVE for the Steam Summer Sale, but it wasn't long before Best Buy was offering a deal of its own on the Oculus Rift. Now Oculus is getting in on the action directly, delivering the best deal we've seen thus far as part of its "Summer of Rift" promotion.
It seems that now is an excellent time to dive into VR. Not only is HTC offering the VIVE at a discount during the Steam Summer Sale, but Best Buy has now put together a VR deal of its own. This time around, the focus is on the Oculus Rift, though what Best Buy is offering isn't really a "sale" of sorts.
This week the folks at NVIDIA have high-fived a set of VR games that, combined, make a radical VR collection for the GTX 1080 Ti and Oculus Rift. Bundles exist that begin with the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/GTX 1080/1070/1060 graphics card, system, or laptop and roll with an Oculus Rift + Oculus Touch. For those looking for the most insane "you've graduated school, now it's time to leave the real world" gift, this is it.
Facebook Spaces is launching today on Oculus VR, a virtual social network for avatars automatically created from your photos and galleries of your friends. The next step in the social site's embrace of virtual reality, it's effectively a live VR conference call - though clearly billed as something a lot more fun than that. Importantly, Facebook is making the barrier to taking part as low as possible.
It used to be that if you wanted to pretend to be a rock star, you'd have to plop down in front of your TV with a copy of Rock Band or Guitar Hero and your plastic guitar. Today, that process is becoming a little more involved. You still need the plastic guitar, but your time as a rock star can be a little more realistic with the arrival of Rock Band VR on Oculus Rift.
Eager to get your hands on a virtual reality headset but not quite ready to part with several hundred dollars? If so, Oculus has some good news: it has slashed the price of the Rift + Touch VR headset and controllers by $200, bringing the new total to $598 USD. If you aren’t interested in the whole package, though, the items are also offered separately, with the Rift by itself costing $499 USD and the Touch being a separate $99 USD, while the Oculus Sensor is $59 USD by itself.
This week the Virtual Reality version of Rock Band has been released on pre-order for the masses. This game is coming with its own Fender Stratocaster wireless controller for Xbox One or PS4 in a single package. The game as we played it earlier this year was an interesting translation of the classic Rock Band experience into a fully encapsulating environment the likes of which have not been possible up until now.
Modern VR systems still grapple, pardon the pun, with controllers these days and each system has a different take on how it should be done. HTC Vive has its wand while Google Daydream has its mini remote. The Oculus Rift went with a single-button remote and a regular Xbox One controller. Until today. Yes, the Oculus Touch is now available for purchase, promising a more natural feeling when using your hands in VR. And while the controllers can be bought separately, reviews have made it clear, this is an essential part of the Oculus Rift experience.
The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset finally has its own set of hand-held controllers in Oculus Touch. That is to say, other than the Xbox One controller, which ships with the headset - and the one-button remote control, which also comes with the headset. What we're doing today is giving you an idea of what the general consensus is amongst reviewers from around the blogosphere - good, bad, and ugly.