Oculus Rift Shipping Q1 2016, Comes with Xbox One Controller, Streams Xbox One Games

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Oculus VR held their pre-E3 2015 press conference today, and there’s lots of information to sift through for the virtual reality platform.

First up – the release window for the HMD is a bit more solidified – Q1 of next year. We’ve also learned that each consumer package for the Oculus will come with a wireless Xbox One controller, as well as a wireless Xbox One dongle for your Windows 10 PC.

Coming from this, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream your Xbox One games to your Oculus headset, in a virtual home theater environment. Oculus VR is pledging $10 million towards supporting independent game developers to bring their products to the platform. this new suite is called “Oculus Home,” where you can hop in as soon as you put on the Rift. Fans can acces their games list, friends list, and more. You’ll also be able to try out VR demos of games, prior to buying them. There’s also a 2D version of this being developed for computers.

Oculus is working alongside a bunch of developers and publishers on bringing their games to the Rift as well. They include:

  • 4A Games
  • Carbon Games
  • CCP Games
  • Climax
  • Coatsink
  • Glu
  • Gunfire Games
  • Harmonix
  • High Voltage Games
  • Insomniac Games
  • Ozwe
  • Playful
  • Ready at Dawn
  • Sanzaru Games
  • Signal Studios
  • Square Enix

Games were demoed, announced, or reiterated during their presser. They include:

  • EVE Valkyrie (CCP Games)
  • Chronos (Gunfire Games) – An atmospheric RPG that chronicles one young man’s lifelong quest to save his homeland from a great evil. Central to this quest is an ancient labyrinth, which holds the secrets necessary to restore life and peace to his home. However, the architects of this labyrinth designed it to open only once a year. The labyrinth is a test, and each time the hero fails he is cast out and must wait one year to return.
  • Edge of Nowhere (Insomniac Games) – A VR third-person action-adventure game. Travel to the far reaches of the Antarctic mountains in search of a missing expedition team. What appears to be a rescue mission takes a turn as you venture into the deep unknown, and discover a surreal world that will test your wits and sanity. Scale towering mountains and use makeshift weapons to survive and avoid descending into madness. In Edge of Nowhere, nothing is what it seems and the unexpected lurks from all sides.
  • Damaged Core
  • VR Sports Challenge (Sanzaru Games)
  • Lucky’s Tale (Playful)
  • Esper (Coatsink)
  • AirMech VR (Carbon Games)

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Finally, there was a new announcement in the form of “Oculus Touch,” a new input device (shown above) in which you can interact with your VR games and worlds.

The new peripherals can be held in both hands, providing 360 degrees of tracking. Each device comes with an analog stick, an analog trigger, and two face buttons. They also feature haptic feedback, so you can feel the objects you’re touching in game, and they can detect touch from all of your fingers. The Oculus Touch was designed with six core points: hand presence, manipulation, low mental load, communicative gestures, traditional inputs, and finally being lightweight.

We’ll be hopefully getting our hands on the new goodies next week, at E3 2015.

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