Oculus Rift Consumer Model "Months, Not Years" Away

The Oculus Rift consumer model is now “months, not years” away from being released. That’s according to Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe, who said today during the Web Summit 2014 in Dublin that the latest version of the Crescent Bay headset is “largely finalized for a consumer product.”

As reported by The Next Web, Iribe acknowledged that he understands people are champing at the bit for the consumer model. “We’re all hungry for it to happen,” he said. “We’re getting very close. It’s months, not years away, but many months.”

“We’ve gone out there and set this bar and said, ‘We want to get it right,'” Iribe added. “We don’t want it to be four or five years. We’re eager for this to happen.”

“We don’t want it to be four or five years. We’re eager for this to happen” — Brendan Iribe

When the consumer version of Oculus Rift is released, you can expect it to sell for around $200-$400, according to previous comments from Oculus VR.

One of the major challenges that Oculus Rift still needs to overcome, Iribe said, comes down to creating a compelling input device. He explained that traditional keyboards, mice, and gamepads aren’t up to snuff, and the kind of gesture-based controls out there today aren’t either.

While we don’t know how Oculus VR will solve this issue, the company acquired Xbox 360 controller designer Carbon Design earlier this year. When the buyout was announced in June, Oculus VR said it had already been working with Carbon Design for more than a year on “multiple unannounced projects.”

Also during his talk, Iribe revealed that Oculus VR is now up to 200 employees following its $2 billion acquisition by social networking giant Facebook in March. And responding to a question about rival VR headsets, Iribe said he’s concerned that some companies might decide to ship devices before they overcome problems such as motion sickness.

“We’re a little worried about bigger companies putting out products that aren’t ready,” Iribe said. “Disorientation and motion sickness is the elephant in the room. We’re encouraging big companies not to put out a product before it’s ready.”

Sony is currently working on a virtual reality headset for PlayStation 4 called Project Morpheus. Sony has given no indication as to when it will be released, beyond confirming that it won’t be this year.

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