Oculus Rift price: Headset and computers that can run it start at $1499

The company has released the first pricing for ‘Oculus Ready PCs’ — which have the huge amount of computing power to run the virtual reality headset

Executives at Oculus VR, maker of the much-anticipated virtual-reality headset Oculus Rift have said that digital motion sickness is one of their biggest hurdles

Oculus has revealed the first pricing for PCs that have the huge amount of computing power to run its Rift virtual reality headset.

Bundles that contain both the PC and the Rift headset itself begin at $1499 with pre-order pricing. The computers are made by a range of manufacturers but all have the power required to run the VR software.

Oculus announced last month that its Rift headset would cost $600. That shocked many and led to the company apologising for not making more clear how much it would be.

But the $1500 is in line with previous estimates of the cost. The company had made clear in advance that the cost of all of the equipment required to run the headset would be $1500.

The newly-announced bundles come with the PC itself, as well as everything that comes with the Rift headset. That includes sensors, a remote, an Xbox One controller for interacting with games and two pieces of software for playing within the headset.

The pre-orders will open on 16 February, in what Oculus says are “limited quantities”. They will start shipping from April.

The PCs are made by Asus, Alienware and Dell. They will be sold by Best Buy, Amazon and Microsoft.

Existing computers can run the headset, so long as they are powerful. Oculus’s website includes a compatibility tool that will allow people to check if their PCs are up to it.