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Oculus Rift virtual reality headset launches at UK retail for £549

VR revolution gets underway

Oculus Rift virtual reality headset launches at UK retail for £549

The consumer edition of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset has been released across the UK.

Developer SDKs have been available for years, but September 20th marks the first time the consumer hardware has been available at retail stores.

The retail consumer Oculus Rift headset comes with built-in headphones and mic, a sensor, remote, Xbox One Wireless Controller and a copy of launch game Lucky’s Tale.

What you can expect to get with an Oculus Rift.

It does not come with the Oculus Touch controller. No release date has been announced for the Oculus Touch, though rumours suggest it could launch in November or December.

The Oculus Rift costs £549 in the UK. Retail stores and sites such as Amazon, GAME, PC World and Currys are selling the headsets.

Amazon has noted that due to limited stock however, customers can only purchase one unit per address.

Oculus Rift price

The Oculus Rift will cost consumers £549 in the UK, less than rival HTC Vive’s price of £769.99.

Valve’s hardware does offer room scale tech however, though it requires an obstacle free room and more setup before use.

Like the Vive VR headset, Oculus Rift also requires a PC to power the experience. This can easily add a few hundred pounds to the base headset cost if users needed to buy a PC or upgrade their current setup.

Sony’s PlayStation VR meanwhile will launch in the UK for £349 in October and will require a PS4 to run, making it a cheaper prospect for consumers looking for VR. It will only run PlayStation games, however.

The Samsung Gear VR is one of the cheaper pieces of VR hardware on the market, with a price of £54.90 on Amazon. It also requires a Samsung phone to run. And there's always Google Cardboard making VR even more accessible still.

Oculus Rift specs and requirements

The Oculus Rift requires a reasonably powerful PC to run. The CPU, for example, could cost as much as £180 on its own.

Recommended Oculus Rift PC specifications are:

  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 970/AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
  • Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
  • Memory: 8GB+ RAM
  • Output: HDMI-compatible 1.3 video output
  • Operating System: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit or newer
  • Inputs: 3x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB 2.0

The Oculus Rift has launched with 30 games, such as Lucky’s Tale and Eve: Valkyrie, as well as other entertainment experiences and apps.

Around the world

As the UK Oculus Rift launch gets underway, the Rift headset has been delayed in some stores in Canada, according to CBC News.

A day before the Oculus Rift’s September 20th release date, the headset was delayed by three weeks at Best Buy to October 11th.

Head of Content

Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.