Oculus Rift: March shipping date and price for UK and 20 countries revealed by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg has revealed Facebook's Oculus will ship its first virtual reality device on 28 March after becoming available for pre-order today.
Tech fans will be able to get their hands on the headset in these 20 countries initially: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States.
Shops will also stock Oculus from April and the company said it had ambitions to add more countries over time, but it did not give a time frame or name the retailers where it will be on sale.
"When you put on Oculus, you'll feel like you instantly teleported into adventures like deep-sea diving, piloting a starfighter or playing in a band on stage," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.
"More than 100 virtual reality games and other experiences are coming this year. And long term, I believe virtual reality has the potential to change the way we live, work and communicate in many ways. Today is an important step towards that future."
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said: "I have been working on virtual reality since 2009, and started Oculus in 2012 to bring virtual reality to the masses. We started that process through our partnership with Samsung, shipping GearVR on Black Friday. Today, we are finally launching orders for the Rift, the best VR headset ever. This would not be possible without the hard work of everyone at Oculus, our developer community, and the all around nutcases who have supported us along the way. See you in the Rift!"
On Twitter, Luckey said the Oculus website was experiencing "insanely high load".
Oculus Rift comes with a mic, sensor and Xbox One controller as well as in-built headphones. There's also a remote control to navigate the Oculus store and explore video on the device. Several games will be available on launch and more than 100 are promised by the end of the year, from Oculus's own game studio and others, including the hugely popular Minecraft.
The device, initially funded on Kickstarter before being acquired by Facebook billions of pounds, will be a serious test of the much anticipated but fledgling VR technology and the appetite for it among consumers.