Oculus’ developer conference Connect is in full swing and in the opening keynote, the news many were waiting for has finally been announces. Oculus’ VR motion controllers Touch will go up for pre-order Monday October 10th for $199 and will ship to them on December 6th.
Oculus’s Rift launch in March was a momentous occasion for consumer virtual reality, and despite the trials, tribulation and in some cases disastrous issues the company had in getting the VR headset to buyers, it marked a dawn in a new era of immersive entertainment for many.
However, the headset has come under fire as feeling incomplete when compared to its biggest rival in the PC VR space, the Valve developed and HTC manufactured Vive. Vive cost more, but came packed with the promise of fully tracked motion controllers. In the last months this has been somewhat of a thorn in Oculus’ side, as the company chose to wait until they were happy with both the hardware and the software lineup to support it. Whether this approach was right or wrong remains to be seen, but we’ve had time to try the Touch many times now and it may just be worth the wait.
Now, we can finally put a date on when consumers will be able to buy and own Oculus Touch. The controllers will go up for pre-order for $199 in the US and we already learned via unofficial channels that UK buyers can expect to pay £189. That’s for the controllers alone, but predictably Oculus will also begin offering the Oculus Rift headset along with a pair of Touch controllers in a new bundle, priced $798.
Touch will ship in pairs, with an additional optical tracking sensor to bolster the Rift’s single unit, this is to enhance tracking fidelity and deal with occlusion issues when you’re waving your arms around in VR, hopefully with no loss of tracking.
Additionally, Oculus is promising 35+ titles that will support or be built for Touch within the launch window and we’ve already caught a glimpse of, and gond hands on with, some new ones today. Check out further coverage of the Touch and some of those new titles below.
