Well, it’s official. Oculus has pulled the lifeline on the Oculus Rift S, the successor to the Oculus Rift. After all the stock is gone, there will be no more replenishing of the units. Even though it was announced last year that the Oculus Rift S would receive a price cut, we kind of knew the writing was on the wall. With the Oculus Rift S, you have the tracking on the headset which is what I really liked about the Rift S and not having the external sensors of the original Oculus Rift. And with the Rift S, you didn’t have as many cables needed to experience VR, but you still had to have the PC capable of running it which the minimum specs of an NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti or AMD Radeon RX 470 or higher, 8 gigs of Ram, Intel I3-6100, or AMD Ryzen 3 1200, FX4350, or higher, DisplayPort 1.2 or Mini DisplayPort (an adapter is included in the box) 1 USB 3.0 port and Windows 10 which really is not that bad when you think about it.
And as technology grows, we had the Gear VR that was powered by Oculus, Oculus Go, Oculus Rift, and now Oculus Quest 2. With each one, something is learned and gained with the next headset. Oculus Quest and the more recent Oculus Quest 2 and with the ability of the Oculus Link cable, you can still play your PCVR games and experiences. Yes, the Oculus Quest and Quest 2 have to be charged, but the Oculus Link can help do that when it’s plugged into your PC and you still have to have the minimum requirements to run it, but only needing 1x USB port. So the Oculus Quest 2 really feels in that gap, plus being able to be wireless is a bonus. Yes, there might be other choices out there, but there is something a little special about the Oculus Rift S that I will hold dear to my heart. But since the Oculus Rift S is not going to be replenished, you still might be able to find one and you just might want to get in on that before it’s too late.
As of now, the Oculus Store just has a way to be notified if it comes back in. You could go to Amazon, but those prices are going up as it’s from 3rd parties. Best Buy is sold out, B&H Photo is sold out, eBay could be a choice, but it looks like Target at this time as them new for $299.00 and Walmart as it, but sold from 3rd parties.
But let’s take time to pay our respect to the one and only Oculus Rift S….
