The Oculus Rift comes with a lot of extra accessories and, nearly a year on from launch, we could forgive you if you’d broken or lost one or two of them. But, don’t worry, you can now replace them without buying a new Rift.
Oculus has added a suite of new accessories available to purchase on its web page, which already featured the company’s branded earphones and extra sensors for room scale VR. The extra items are all included with the Rift itself. There’s the simple input Remote for $29, a 4 meter headset cable for $49, the facial lining for $29, and even replacements for the on-ear headphones fitted to the device for $39. None of those prices include shipping, however.
This is a long-requested feature that many will be happy to hear about. Previously if you’d broken a piece of Oculus kit you’d have to go through customer services and hope the company would be able to help you out in some way. The new face lining in particular is appreciated; owners will have been using the original for nearly a year now, and they can accumulate a lot of sweat over that time.
Rift’s rival, the HTC Vive, opened its own accessories store last year, and even allows customers to pick up spare controllers. Replacement Touch controllers aren’t listed in the Oculus store, but perhaps that could come later on once we’ve all had the chance to smash them against walls and televisions. You also can’t buy replacement Xbox One controllers on the store but, then again, you can get them pretty much anywhere else.
Elsewhere in the news, it was revealed yesterday that Oculus is pulling many of its Rift kiosks from Best Buy stores. The company says it’s due to “seasonal changes”, though there’s also speculation it’s due to lack of interest. We wouldn’t expect these accessories to start flooding into those outlets, then.
