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First Oculus Ready PC's, in bundles starting at $1,499

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  • First Oculus Ready PC's, in bundles starting at $1,499

    Asus, Dell, and Alienware towers certified to run virtual reality.

    By Kyle Orland



    Last month when Oculus announced the surprising $599 price for its Rift virtual reality headset, the company also promised upcoming bundles that would include the Rift and a PC that has been certified as "Oculus Ready."

    Today, Oculus revealed details of the first branded PC's in that Oculus Ready line, which will be available for pre-order in bundles with the Rift headset that start at $1,499.

    At the low end of the line, the ASUS G11CD, Alienware X51 R3, and Dell XPS 8900 SE all barely squeak by with Oculus' recommended specs for the Rift. Those low-end Oculus Ready towers all sport an Nvidia GTX 970 graphics card, 8GB of RAM, and Intel i5 processors and sell for $1,499 to $1,599 when bundled with a Rift.

    At the high end of the line, the Oculus Ready Alienware Area 51 has an Nvidia GTX 980, 16GB of RAM, and an i7 processor for a whopping $2,549 MSRP (and that's before you purchase the Rift). Asus and Alienware also offer a few Oculus Ready options somewhere in the middle of the price/power continuum.

    Best Buy, Amazon, and the Microsoft Store will all start taking pre-orders on Rift and PC bundles starting on February 16th, ahead of shipping to "select countries" in April (Best Buy currently lists an April 23rd ship date). Bundling the PC with a Rift brings anywhere from $100 to $200 in savings off the base a la carte price for the hardware, according to the unbundled MSRP's listed on Oculus' and retailers' websites. Those who already ordered a Rift headset separately will receive offer codes to claim the same bundled savings if they subsequently buy an Oculus Ready PC.

    Do-it-yourselfers who scrounge around part-picking websites may be able to get a slightly better deal on an extremely bare-bones PC that can power the Oculus Rift, but the bundled savings mean these Oculus Ready towers actually provide some decent value for the money. The Oculus Ready line should also provide an easy, "all-in" solution for eager virtual reality early adopters that have more curiosity than hardware-building prowess.

    Compared to the sticker shock that accompanied the $599 Rift announcement, Oculus did a good job telegraphing the pricing for these lower-end Oculus Ready PC bundles. Last May, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said in an interview that, for such a bundle, "at most you should be in that $1,500 range." Thanks for the warning.

    The full details on the first Oculus Ready PCs can be seen in the images below, straight from Oculus' website.

    EnlargeOculus

    EnlargeOculus

    EnlargeOculus
    The Hackmaster

  • #2
    Every Oculus Rift owner will get a Unity Pro trial

    By Jeff Grubb


    Image Credit: Unity

    Virtual reality looks like it is potentially the future of consuming entertainment, but one of the industry’s biggest cheerleaders believes you can create content for it as well.

    Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey revealed that his company is giving away a free four month trial of the Unity Pro development engine to everyone who orders the $599 Rift virtual reality headset. This will enable everyone with the device to start building games and experiences using Unity’s new VR tools where you can edit a 3D space while moving around inside of it. This could expose a huge number of VR fans to a market that tech adviser Digi-Capital predicts will reach $120 billion in revenues by 2020. And Luckey also humorously pointed out that it could also make him a few more bucks as well.

    “We want everyone to be a creator,” said Luckey.

    This appeal to consumers goes hand-in-hand with Luckey’s other major point that in order for VR to grow, everyone involved will have to find success. This was his way of telling the developers amassed at the Unity event that their needs are his needs.

    “[The key metrics for success are] mostly going to be dollars spent on content or hours viewed on content,” he said. “It’s not just buying something. If we can make something that people use every day, that’s a good sign for VR as an ecosystem. That means developers are going to be successful. It means developers make more money, and I make more money.”

    This last point about Luckey’s bank account elicited some chuckles from the crowd, but the Oculus founder assured the audience that he is serious.

    “Ecosystems only really work when everyone in the chain is successful,” he said.

    He doesn’t want to see that Oculus is making money from Rift but most developers are not. And it just so happens that when he says “developers” he is talking about everyone who buys a Rift.
    The Hackmaster

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    • #3
      Oculus Rift Bundles to be available for preorder this Tuesday Feb 16th at 8 A.M. PST

      By Wololo

      It’s been announced that Amazon and Best Buy will have Oculus Rift Bundles available for pre-order on Tuesday, Feb 16th. That’s just in a few hours, depending on when you read this.

      Sources have stated that Amazon won’t have much stock, and these will most likely get sold out very fast. Last time Oculus did a pre-order event, their website crashed due to the traffic. I’d refresh the Amazon/Best Buy pages pretty much continuously starting at 7:55 A.M. if I badly wanted one.

      The bundles will have the Oculus rift (duh), an Xbox One wireless controller, the “constellation” sensor, as well as a PC that’s guaranteed to meet the Oculus rift performance requirements. Specifically, Oculus say:
      These PC's have been battle tested and certified by Oculus to deliver an incredible Rift experience.
      The prices of the bundles apparently range from $1,500 to $2,200. It’s unclear at this point if it will be possible to get the Oculus Rift alone as part of this sale, but I’m gonna guess the answer is no.



      This might be a good deal if you badly want an Oculus rift and were looking for a new PC to match it. On the other hand some sites are saying that the deal is focused on a partnership with NVidia, and that it might be doable to get similar performance with cheaper GPU's from Radeon. That is, assuming you’re willing to wait for the Rift to be available for pre-orders again...

      I recently saw game play videos of EVE Valkyrie (see below), and I must say I’m much more enthusiastic about VR now, after seeing those vids. I’ll probably wait for Sony’s PlayStation VR (Morpheus), but I have to admit the Oculus and other VR headsets now look really appealing to me.



      Are you jumping on the VR bandwagon? Will you go with Oculus, PlayStation VR, or something else?

      You can check the Amazon Oculus sales page Here for the sale.

      disclaimer: Amazon links in the article are affiliate links. if you’re one of the lucky few who actually get the device, and you use our links for it, you don’t pay anything extra but we get a small commission for the sale.
      The Hackmaster

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