Regular readers might have noticed that Oculus finally lifted the lid on their long-awaited Touch controllers, announcing not only a pre-order date but a price. Those pre-orders are now available — as is the cost to Australians.
As was the case with the Rift itself, the Touch controllers are a touch more pricey for Australians. It’s not a gargantuan premium though, with Oculus charging $288 ($US219) for the controllers at the time of writing.
You’ll get a second Oculus sensor and a connector for Rock Band VR with the two touch controllers, and you can get free shipping right now as well. The Oculus Blog site notes that shipping costs might apply, but an Oculus employee confirmed on their sub-reddit that “there is no additional fee for shipping for accessories”.
You’ll still have to pay shipping if you want to order the Rift and Touch controllers as a bundle, of course. That bundle will set you back a flat $US1000 (~$1319) including shipping and other fees. That’s marginally less than what a Vive will cost you right now ($US1019, or $1344 with shipping and taxes), but probably not enough to influence people one way or another.
To those who bought into VR earlier this year: how are you finding the tech and the games that came with it?
Comments
10 responses to “Oculus Touch Is Under $290 For Australians With Free Shipping”
Umm or PS VR for $550 plus $120 for controllers?
The Rift and PSVR are both VR headsets, but they’re playing to two completely different markets. But that’s an argument for a much bigger piece down the road.
Different market imo.
Rift/Vive is more towards enthusiast level while PSVR is more.. consumer level? Lower entry point for the same tech for sure.
If you are keen on VR but dont have a powerful PC but owns the PS4, I would suggest to go for PSVR to have the taste of VR. I believe Sony’s VR library will be a big drive towards the console VR market due to lower entry point compare to a $3000 PC + Rift/Vive combo.
From what has been announced, most of the PSVR titles are timed exclusives and will go to the PC eventually.
As @alexwalker said, too early to predict what the market is going to be and how PS VR will push the VR market but Sony definitely did a good choice making it affordable and backed by various publishers.
I think the argument for ordering a Rift headset and then Touch controllers separate rather than in a bundle would be the cost of each item individually shipped being under the $1000 GST / Duty threshold. If ordered as a bundle the overall price is > $1000 AUD and would attract duty / GST, where the headset itself is around $875 AUD ($649 USD) and wouldn’t.
I actually don’t know about the rift, but I bought a vive and the price you pay to HTC includes GST, so if the rift does not include gst and you have to pay customs instead, it means the vive is cheaper in total in Australia. Secondly Even if you make separate purchases that total over $1000, even if you try doing it on separate days, you are actually still legally liable to pay GST. The chance of being “caught” by customs is reduced, but it is still possible for them to catch you importing over $1000 within a few weeks
Rifts are GST inclusive when you pay for it. You should not have to pay for GST/Duty. Same goes for Vive I believe.
Ahh, wasn’t aware of that. Didn’t see it anywhere when I did a fake check-out to see what the price was, it just said $649.00USD.
Cheers. I preordered the rift back then and we had all these questions about taxes and stuff but they clarified it that we should not pay any tax.
Some european orders was asked to pay for taxes but Oculus dealt with the them directly and all good.
If you mess around with the delivery address, you can see our price is 10% more than usual which was the tax portion.
It’s July 2017 already?
The $1000-free threshold applies currently. July 2017 is the $0 threshold (i.e. no free amount).
Oh yes my bad.
another plus for ordering the headset and controllers separately; you get the headset now and can use it for all the existing stuff while waiting for the controllers