Palmer Luckey has revealed that Oculus VR did not plan to launch the Rift headset with the Touch controllers at all.
The Oculus Touch are the Oculus Rift’s motion controllers. In contrast to conventional motion controllers, such as the PlayStation Move controllers that will work with PlayStation VR, the Touch come as a pair of small, wireless hand grips. Each controller features face buttons, triggers, and analog sticks. They seem to meet motion controllers and traditional controllers half-way, and can also be a conduit for completely unique experiences. Last January, Oculus VR announced they would delay Touch to improve the technology and manufacture more units.
Luckey explains the decision not to launch them together was for the benefit of developers. Many developers already prepared games and experiences using traditional controllers, and these are what will be Oculus’ focus at launch. Luckey has an even better rationale to not bundle the Touch and the Rift headset. As he explains it, he did not want consumers to feel obliged to get the controllers. In particular, he states Touch does not have a substantial library for itself, and it is only useful for a select group of game genres.
Perhaps to bolster his argument for delaying Touch, Luckey also talked about VR having an adoption curve. Reacting to statements that 2016 will be the year of VR, he believes that this will only be true to a limited extent. This year won’t see the kind 0f mass market adoption that Oculus and other companies hope to see, but Luckey does seem hopeful for the near future. With this in mind, it would make sense to launch Touch and Oculus Rift separately, and for Oculus VR to work on increasing adoption in the months that follow.
Oculus Rift will be releasing on March 28 for $ 600. You can check out the 30 games launching with it here.
