The Oculus Rift VR headset and its Oculus Touch motion controllers have received a major discount to the tune of hundreds of dollars. As part of a temporary "Summer of Rift" sale event, PC game players looking to get into virtual reality can pick up the Oculus Rift bundle for just $399. That bundle includes the headset, controllers, sensors, wires, and connectors necessary to get started in VR the day the package arrives. And to top it off, the Oculus Rift bundle also includes at least 7 software titles out of the box, including the awesome Robo Recall.

For comparison, the Oculus Rift launched at a price of $599 without its Touch motion controllers. The Touch controllers would launch months later for an additional $199, which included the second sensor necessary to track your hands in a 3D space. Since then Oculus has offered an assortment of discounts to keep up interest in the VR headset. That includes discounting both the headset and the controllers by $99, so $499 and $99 respectively. That remains the official pricing, bundled for $599, up until today.

That means that the Summer of Rift discount is officially another $200 off the bundled retail price of the Oculus Rift and the Oculus Touch. It is a huge discount, considering the Oculus Rift and Touch launched in March and December 2016 respectively. That's $400 over an averaged year, though to be fair the Summer of Rift is a temporary discount. That's the nature of groundbreaking tech like Virtual Reality however. The Summer of Rift is an outstanding sale right now, but things change rapidly in virtual reality.

As it must, virtual reality comes with some fine text. The Oculus Rift and its controllers require an already beefy (and expensive) PC to handle it. Recommended specs include an Nvidia 1060/AMD 480 GPU and an Intel i5-4590/AMD Ryzen 5 1500X or comparable. Oculus hardware also requires 3 USB 3.0 ports and 1 USB 2.0 port, a detail that sneaks up on a lot of people. Some older systems may need to buy a USB 3.0 add-on card for their PC to handle this requirement. The Oculus Rift isn't a great impulse buy unless you've got the money to support it.

There's also a warning to be heeded regarding the future of virtual reality. Odds are that a new, updated version of the Oculus Rift could be announced as soon as October's Oculus Connect event. Whether it be a standalone wireless headset that wirelessly connects to your PC, or an iterative upgrade with improved lenses and screens, it's just the nature of this budding industry to continue to improve. While it's extremely unlikely that VR software wouldn't be backwards compatible with older headsets, for those who might prefer newer hardware waiting could be a smart decision.

Yet it's absolutely true that $399 is an unbelievable entry price to virtual reality, especially with a hearty selection of games now available on the platform. The bundle itself includes: Robo Recall, Lucky's Tale, Dragon Front, Quill, Medium, Dead & Buried, and Toybox. Expand that library with titles like Edge of Nowhere, Job Simulator, Chronos, Thumper, Superhot VR, Wilson's Heart, and the forthcoming Lone Echo from Ready at Dawn and that's an outstanding Oculus virtual reality line-up. There's no better time to buy in to virtual reality, just maybe make sure it doesn't make you motion sick first.

The Oculus Rift headset and Oculus Touch controllers are available now in a $399 bundle at most major retailers. The Summer of Rift sale event will reportedly last just 6 weeks, but there's a chance stock might disappear before the sale ends.