European and Canadian VR fans after an Oculus Rift have had to get one from the official Oculus site since its launch in March. That changes next month.
Oculus has revealed that the VR headset will be heading to retailers in both regions in September. The news comes just ahead of the Rift’s showing at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany this week. In the UK, Amazon, John Lewis, Curry’s PCWorld, and Game will be selling the headset for £549. That’s a good deal more expensive than the £463 that the Rift’s $599 US price converts to, but doesn’t have shipping added on. That takes the price up to £529 in the UK, so there’s not much in it.
This makes Game the first UK retailer to offer both the HTC Vive and Rift. Come October, it will have the whole set as PlayStation VR arrives.
Canada will have Rift units available in its Best Buy outlets as well as the Microsoft Store Online. France, meanwhile, will have units in Amazon and FNAC, while Germany will sell from Amazon, MediaMarkt, and Saturn. Every unit will feature localized materials and, of course, a copy of Lucky’s Tale. Oculus will also be taking the Rift on a road trip following Gamescom, allowing people across Germany to get their hands on the device.
It’s interesting timing for the retail launch as, like we said earlier, PlayStation VR arrives with a bigger retail presence the month after. No doubt Oculus is hoping to draw more attention to the Rift before its big rival launches and the war for Christmas sales begins.
But what about Oculus’ anticipated position-tracked controller, Oculus Touch? That will apparently have in-store retail experiences this October, but still no word on where and when it will actually be sold. For that information, we may well have to wait until Oculus Connect 3, which runs from October 5th – 7th and will feature a host of other updates from the company. Until then, Oculus will be at Gamescom with a host of experiences to try its new devices with.
