The Oculus Rift will ship to consumers in Q1 2016, the Oculus VR Team has announced. Pre-orders will be available starting later this year.

"The Rift delivers on the dream of consumer VR with compelling content, a full ecosystem, and a fully-integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality. It’s a system designed by a team of extremely passionate gamers, developers, and engineers to reimagine what gaming can be."

"The Oculus Rift builds on the presence, immersion, and comfort of the Crescent Bay prototype with an improved tracking system that supports both seated and standing experiences, as well as a highly refined industrial design, and updated ergonomics for a more natural fit.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll be revealing the details around hardware, software, input, and many of our unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift."

source

Pity it is so late....

its probably gonna release before morphues. 

Yeah but was expected early 2015...Then they said summer and now it is next year. Was looking forward to upgrade this year.

When was Ocolus Rift announced? 2012? 2013? -_-

Ouch, around the time Morpheus releases, and likely after Vive if it isn't also delayed. Really terrible considering all the buzz they created in the last 2 years.

I think Morpheus is gonna win the VR war just because a PC gaming peripheral never went mainstream and Sony's bigger marketing dollars. I think the only way the others (and Morpheus too) can really become the next hype is if they were also on smartphones.

i wonder how the final version specs are?

so more or less head to head with morpheous. aligned launches will make it fun to watch.

the blog post said they will share some technical specs next week and more details in the following weeks

nah, I think it was better to release next year, because there still isn't enough software that supports VR and this way they can make sure to get relatively high res screens (last prototype used 2, I guess they'll go with that) at a more affordable price -> lower release price

additionally it helps that new GPU generations will be out by then and 970 / 290 level of performance will pretty certainly be available for around $250

Around the same time as Morpheus, huh?

Interesting...