No one ever expected high-end virtual reality to come cheap, and Oculus VR has certainly proven that fact today by finally revealing that the price point for Oculus Rift will be $599.

While that does seem a bit pricey for the average non-hardcore gaming consumer, the Rift will come with a few extra goodies aside from the VR headset itself. The full kit includes an Xbox One controller (typically retails for $59.99), a sensor and a remote, which Oculus says is designed to “make it simple and intuitive to navigate VR experiences.”

The device will also be shipping with two free games: Playful Corp’s Lucky’s Tale, a cartoony 3D platformer in the same vein as Banjo-Kazooie or Mario 64, and CCP Games’ Eve: Valkyrie, a dog-fighting space sim set in the Eve Online universe.

Minimum requirements

Of course, while the Rift may come with a few extra goodies, the price is made a little more difficult to swallow by the beefy system requirements for a PC capable of actually running VR programs.

Here’s what you’ll need for “the full Rift experience”:

• Graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
• Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
• Memory: 8GB+ RAM
• Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
• Operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer

For those of you who don’t have a high-end gaming PC, Oculus has tried to make it easy to jump on the VR bandwagon by partnering with hardware companies to create an “Oculus-Ready” certification for PCs. In theory, you will be able to buy any system with that logo and take full advantage of the Rift.

According to Oculus, there will be Oculus-Ready PC bundles that come with a Rift headset that will be available for pre-order in February starting at $1,499.

Unfortunately, these prices do not include the recently delayed Oculus Touch motion controllers, but Oculus notes that pre-ordering the Rift will “secure your place in line” to pre-order Touch.

Image courtesy of Oculus VR