The Oculus Rift VR headset has been talked-about forever, but thus far, its commercial launch has kept getting pushed back for one reason or another. Now however, through a post on social networking site Twitter, the co-founder of Oculus, Mr. Palmer Luckey, has come out and given an ETA for the commercial version of the device to hit the store shelves. In a tweet dated December 22nd, Mr. Luckey revealed that pre-orders for the much-awaited virtual reality headset will open in the first quarter of next year. The company had recently sent out an e-mail to developers, saying that the ‘Final Rift Hardware’ is already shipping to developers as part of the Rift SDK 1.0, which indicated that the final consumer version of the upcoming headset is all set to hit the market sooner rather than later.
Coming to the aforementioned December 22nd tweet that forms the basis of this report, “Preorders are coming soon after new year. Enjoy a stress-free holiday, we won’t launch preorders without warning!” is what Mr. Luckey had to inform VR enthusiasts, earning him hundreds of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’. There were multiple more tweets from Mr. Luckey on the same day, revealing a few more pieces of info regarding the much-awaited headset. In another tweet on the same day, Mr. Luckey further claimed that the manufacturing process is going well, and that the company is well on target for “an awesome Rift launch” in the first quarter of the New Year. Yet another tweet from the founder of Oculus revealed that everybody pre-ordering the Rift stands to get a copy of the multiplayer dogfighting shooter game, Eve: Valkyrie, completely free-of-cost.
Upon release, the Oculus Rift is expected to rival other similar gadgets like the HTC Vive, which is being developed by the Taiwanese vendor in association with Valve Corporation, the world’s largest online distributor of gaming titles. That particular device however, was recently reported to have been delayed till April, meaning, the Oculus Rift may well be the very first commercially-launched virtual reality headset after the Gear VR devices from South Korean tech giant Samsung. It remains to be seen what 2016 brings, but with Sony also set to join the action with its own Playstation VR (formerly known as Project Morpheus) headset, VR enthusiasts can only have good times ahead of them in the upcoming year.