Last August Oculus quietly raised the price of its Rift VR headset in the UK, likely thanks to the country’s decision to leave the European Union, dubbed Brexit. Today, though, you can pretend like that never happened.
A number of UK retailers have dropped the price of the Rift from £549 to £499, which was the original cost of the device when it launched in March 2016 on Oculus’ own site. That includes Amazon, where you get next day delivery with Prime, PC World, from which you can collect in-store today, and John Lewis, which is offering a 2-year guarantee. Oculus’ own site is still offering it at the normal price.
Take note that this isn’t a permanent price cut; John Lewis will be putting it back up to £549 tomorrow and it’s likely the others will follow suit.
This might not be the reduction you’ve been waiting for, then, but it’s likely to be the only one you’ll see in a while. You could spend the £50 saved on some of the Rift’s best gamepad games, like Edge of Nowhere [Review: 9/10], or Damaged Core [Review: 9.5/10].
Technically this is actually the cheapest you’ve ever been able to get a Rift in the UK, as ordering from Oculus’ site comes with hefty shipping costs.
Bare in mind that this is just for the Rift itself, which comes with an Xbox controller, and not the Touch controllers, which will set you back an extra £189.
The Rift isn’t the only VR headset to get a price hike in the face of Brexit; HTC’s Vive was the first to raise its price from £689 to £759. It’s an extra blow to wallets for hardware that’s already incredibly costly, but hopefully future generations of VR tech will be able to combat cost as they continue to raise the bar of what’s possible in VR.
