Oculus debuting the Rift before E3

Oculus, the pioneers in bringing back Virtual Reality to gaming, are finally ready to release their consumer version of the Rift. It is, however, still a product that has yet to be shown publicly for the first time – something many would’ve expected to take place at E3 next month. That’s still sort of happening, if not just a few days before.

Oculus has begun sending out invitations for an exclusive Oculus media conference, nearly a full week before the biggest gaming convention on the planet kicks off. The tagline for the event reads “Step into the Rift”, which unsurprisingly gives off the impressions that we’ll finally see what the Rift will look like on shelves next year.

We’ll hopefully also get a far more accurate figure on pricing, with the ballpark figure sitting around the $250 – $350 region right now. More specific technical specifications regarding resolution, framerate and audio would also be great – especially since the recommended PC specifications revealed last week turned more than a few heads.

I feel as though Oculus is fighting an unnecessary uphill battle at the moment though, and it’s mostly their fault. The Rift missed a crucial window to lead the advancement into VR – now launching after Valve’s own crack at it and dancing devilishly close to Sony’s Morpheus. While the latter really isn’t a competitor given the Rift’s PC exclusivity, the former is a big issue – and I think it’s really going to come down to one or the other at this stage.

But there’s still a lot of time between now and then, and Valve still have to do some formal announcements of their own. Next month is going to be more interesting than most in the VR race I suspect.

Last Updated: May 20, 2015