Oculus Rift

Why Apple should be more bullish on Virtual Reality

2016 will unquestionably be remembered as the year Virtual Reality made a meaningful entrance to the tech world. Granted, there were murmurings and early adaptations long before, but with the staggered release of Oculus Rift in March, the HTC Vive in April, or the new Samsung Gear VR in August, Virtual Reality (of varying degrees) appears to have accomplished the shift from nascent tech-demo material to becoming a more legitimate contender for a share of your wallet.

On October 13, Playstation joined the fray, releasing the arguably most consistent and yet affordable VR experience with Playstation VR. If early numbers and reviews are anything to go by, this could be the product to help the technology cross the consumer chasm once and for all and attract mainstream interest.

You can now pre-order Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset for $599, ships in March

Facebook on Wednesday confirmed that Oculus, a virtual-reality company it bought in March of 2014 for $2 billion, will be launching its hotly anticipated Rift virtual-reality headset at the end of March 2016.

Priced at $599, the device is now available for pre-order and will initially ship to 20 countries starting March 28, including Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, Oculus said.

The Rift comes bundled with two games—Lucky's Tale and EVE: Valkyrie—with more than a hundred games coming later this year, including Rockband VR by Harmonix, Edge of Nowhere by Insomniac, The Climb by Crytek and Minecraft by Microsoft-owned Mojang.

Facebook is working on virtual reality apps that would allow you to create content

Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox revealed on Tuesday that the company is planning virtual reality apps, following its acquisition of Oculus close to a year ago. The revelation came at the Code/Media conference happening in California this week.

While Cox wouldn't share specifics of the apps Facebook is working on, the product chief told Recode the virtual reality apps' users would be able to make virtual reality content.Â