The Oculus Rift development program received much media attention over the last couple of years and promised a revolution in the world of virtual reality, except that considerable delays allowed the HTC Vive to close in on delivery timelines. Even though Oculus started shipping pre-ordered Rift VR headsets from March 25, it is only now that the company has finally fulfilled all pre-orders and is ready to deliver newly ordered headsets in a timely fashion. If you’ve been waiting to get your hands around an Oculus Rift, you can place an order via a number of select retailers in the country. However, if you aren’t sure yet and want to try out the headset first, you can do that by visiting any of 500 Best Buy stores where you will be able to try out a Oculus Rift in real time.
Oculus couldn’t have chosen a better time to fulfil all pre-orders, as Sony’s PlayStation VR is already available to pre-order and costs $200 less. At the same time, despite putting a heavy price tag of $799 on the Vive, HTC sold as many as 15,000 headsets in the first 15 minutes after the pre-order window opened. So the fact that people can buy Oculus Rift headsets straight from nearby stores should give the device an edge over the Vive and PlayStation VR headsets. Back in May, Best Buy began stocking demo versions of the Oculus Rift and pre-order customers of the Rift were given the option to buy the headsets from the stores after trying them out and cancelling their pre-orders, unless their pre-ordered headsets had been shipped out already. Given that customers can now buy the headsets both online and in store, the process is much more streamlined than before.
While the Oculus Rift was initially available to pre-order in 20 countries including the United States, the UK, France, Germany and Japan, it is currently unclear if the headset is now available in more regions around the world. The commercial version of the Rift includes an Xbox One controller, two free games, a remote control, cables and of course, the headset itself. Despite years of testing, the VR system will continue to receive new updates and Facebook had in fact pushed out an update in May which allowed users of the Oculus Rift to install their games on any drive on their PCs.