Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to be compatible with Xbox One games such as Halo
Oculus Rift has finally arrived. Kind of.
Three years since Oculus first got off the ground with a Kickstarter campaign, and just over a year since it was bought by Facebook for $2bn, the virtual reality company today debuted the consumer version of its Oculus Rift headset.
Expected to be available to buy early in 2016 (no official date has been set), the Oculus Rift headset will work natively with Windows 10 and include an Xbox One controller, allowing users to play games through the headset.
Read more: Virtual reality is here
At a press conference in San Francisco, Xbox chief executive Phil Spencer explained that the Microsoft partnership would "make it easy to set up, jump in and have incredible VR experiences from day one".
Xbox One games such as Halo, Forza and Overdrive will be available to play through the headset which Oculus chief executive Brendan Iribe today described as a "paradigm change".
The company also showcased the prototype for a future controller Oculus Touch which will allow gamers to make natural hand movements such as communicative gestures or pulling a trigger instead of bashing a button and twisting a joystick.
Showing off his creation, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said: "This isn't science fiction: This is reality, and it's happening today."