Oculus Rift release date news: Pre-orders to go live as early as next month

Oculus RiftOculus website

Good news to fans who have been waiting to get into a more immersive virtual reality experience –- pre-orders for the Oculus Rift have been pegged to start after New Year.

According to AJC, the announcement came from Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey. Apparently, Luckey tweeted that the Oculus Rift's imminent release date is already set in stone, since pre-orders will go live as early as next month.

Luckey said, "Preorders are coming soon after new year. Enjoy a stress-free holiday, we won't launch preorders without warning!"

However, Luckey did not give any specific date when the pre-orders will start, just that it will go live after New Year.

The Oculus Rift is one of the much-anticipated VR headsets to launch, judging by the positive reviews that another Oculus VR device, Samsung's Gear VR, reaped. According to Time Magazine, the Samsung Gear VR performs admirably overall as a virtual reality headset, and its downside of being only compatible with certain Samsung flagship devices will be balanced out by the upcoming Oculus Rift.

Although they share some similarities, the Oculus Rift is deemed to be an above-average accessory compared to the Samsung Gear VR, as it was made specifically with games and other graphics-intensive tasks in mind.

Investor Place added that the user-friendly feature of the upcoming Oculus Rift is an additional advantage. Meanwhile, the industry follower also surmised that another point in its favor is that it will launch much cheaper than its expected price tag, which might be $350.

However, Vine Report said that the Oculus Rift will be much more compatible with a computer that has at least a GTX 970 or R9 290 for graphics, 8 GB of RAM, and a minimum of an Intel Core i5 processor.