Facebook-owned Oculus to sell Rift package for $1,500; VR Headset To Be Released Early 2016

After leaving a hint of how Facebook will be integrating the Oculus Rift to its platform, the highly anticipated virtual reality headset is finally hitting the market in early 2016 with an initial cost of $1500, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe announced on Wednesday.

Last time around, the company owned by Facebook has revealed that its virtual reality headset, Oculus Rift, will be rolled out to the market beginning in the early 2016. However, the company has kept the details of the price range under the wraps just until yesterday.

"We are looking at an all-in price, if you have to go out and actually need to buy a new computer and you're going to buy the Rift ... at most you should be in that $1,500 range," Iribe revealed onstage at Re/code's annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

Prior to this announcement, Facebook already had in mind its desired price for the VR headset which is between $200 and $400. However, the device requires a computer with certain specifications which costs at around $1000 or more and thus, it brings the total price range of Oculus Rift to the amount Iribe announced yesterday.

This means that the highly anticipated Facebook-owned virtual headset will end up in the market with a more expensive price tag than it was expected. In fact, an additional 'solution' was even suggested by the Oculus chief executive that could make the device more expensive. "There will be solutions that are more than [$1,500] that give you an even richer, bigger holodeck experience," he elaborated.

Recently, an exciting and interesting detail about the usage of the VR headset was disclosed and it was revealed that the Oculus Rift can mirror the user's facial performances to a so-called virtual body double or a virtual avatar. Even though this part of the project was not mentioned in Iribe's speech at the conference, at least it gives the potential buyers an idea of what they will be getting in exchange of its pricy cost.