Oculus Rift pre-orders to start, gadget founder Palmer Luckey to join the conversation with fans

Oculus announced today that its virtual reality headset, Rift, will start taking pre-orders on Jan. 6 at 8 a.m. (PST). This will come with the previously announced pre-order freebies, which is a free copy of “Eve: Valkyrie” by CCP Games and “Lucky’s Tale” by Playful.

The virtual reality company Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook for US$2 billion (approx. AU$2.8 billion) in 2014, confirmed that the Rift pre-orders will start on Wednesday. Rift will also come bundled with a Microsoft Xbox controller according to an announcement made by Xbox head, Phil Spencer, during an Oculus press conference.

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is one of three highly-anticipated VR devices coming in 2016. Google Cardboard is already available as a lower-end mobile VR gear which is compatible for both Android and iOS devices. Last year in November, Samsung Gear VR was also introduced and works with select Samsung smartphones.

Another product from Oculus is expected to be launched later this year. The device, Oculus’ Touch motion controllers, allows motion tracking of VR users. It means that the device works to incorporate the movements of VR users into games or other applications. Oculus’ Touch has been delayed due to incomplete design work.

“On the path to perfecting Touch, we’ve decided that we need more time before release, and we’ll now be shipping Touch in the second half of 2016,” Oculus stated in its official blog post.

As such, the new blog post has also confirmed that the Oculus Rift headset will be coming without the Oculus Touch. Apart from the Oculus Rift’s launch, fans can also expect another event which is a Reddit AMA with Oculus founder, Palmer Luckey. This will happen on launch day at 6:00 p.m. PST. Luckey will answer the questions of fans during this session. Oculus stated that fans can expect more information on Wednesday when pre-orders go live.