"It feels incredible. I mean, we've been working on this for years and years."
Palmer Luckey is an excited young man. Deservedly so, since he's about to deliver on a product he created. One with so much hype, it has gamers drooling, tech developers trying to thing of ways to use it, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg willing to buy the whole shebang for two billion dollars.
Oculus Rift is a headset that takes you to a virtual world. VR is dominating this year's Game Developer's Conference, with the (someday) promise of changing the way we interact with games, travel, movies, even each other.
"The goal of VR is to replicate reality as closely as possible," says Luckey, who also admits, "it's not gonna be mass market overnight. It's gonna take a few years."
There are challenges. For one thing, it's expensive. The Rift will fun you about $600, and you'll also need a powerful PC to run it. It's not Mac compatible yet (causing Apple fans to groan), and there's competition from the likes of Sony, which has a PlayStation VR set due in October for about $400.
But Oculus is coming soon. The pre-orders will deliver on March 28th. Luckey says the Rift is already back-ordered, and he seems relaxed about early adopters getting to try it our before it becomes a full-blown consumer product.
And, of course, there's the Facebook link. Luckey says he and Zuckerberg agree, they want to "make VR into something for billions of people."
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Perhaps it's on the way.
Scott tracks VR on Twitter: @scottbudman
Huge day for VR. Working on an exclusive with @oculus founder Palmer Luckey for tonight... pic.twitter.com/shLZVeMq2N — scott budman (@scottbudman) March 16, 2016
