Oculus Rift ships, kicks off VR officially, so good luck affording one

A great philosopher once wrote that "the future is made of virtual insanity". Truer words have never been spoken, as we are now officially in the age of VR. I say 'officially' and not 'actually' because odds are you are not one of the people to have pre-ordered an Oculus Rift, as this week the only people who can experience VR are those who paid their way in super early. So yeah, good luck getting one. The fact that people have them now does not mean you can waltz into a store and buy one, though; this is more for the enthusiasts and the loyalists than it is for mainstream consumers. That push will come later this year.

The Oculus Rift's early adopter only launch is more symbolic and emblematic of the coming VR war between the HTC Vive, Sony's PSVR, and phone headsets like Samsung's Gear. And as the first to take the giant leap for mankind, all the early reviews for the Rift and its launch games means lots of nit-picking and hot takes from Twitterverse. The most notable games on day one include Lucky's Tale, Eve: Valkyrie, and Adrift, and they got middling to okay reviews across the board. The Rift bundle itself (the headset, the sensor, the headphones, and a remote control) all got generally positive feedback from early users and testers and reviewers, so full steam ahead on diving in if you're interested!

$599 is what it's going to cost you, but that doesn't not include the Oculus motion controllers that look like onion rings, and it'll be more once you start getting games that utilize full body tracking and movement. Also the games can add up too, if you buy a lot of them. Dang, VR is crazy expensive, and that's NOT accounting for the fact that you need a full blown rig to run it. So if your computer is not state of the art, then sorry bud, the future is not coming to you soon.

All in all, we are now one step closer to this, and I am sort of okay with that: