Oculus Rift and Touch controller bundle gets a permanent price cut to $499

Following news this week that the Oculus Rift headset is being bundled with its then-optional Oculus Touch controllers for $399 this summer, Oculus has now gone ahead and announced a permanent price drop for the pair. No, not $399, but when the “Summer of Rift” promotion ends in five weeks the Rift and Touch bundle will jump to $499 rather than the previous $599 price.

Not only that, but the “Rift and Touch bundle” is now the only way to buy an Oculus Rift. They’re even boxed together, with the headset, two Touch controllers, and two sensors all in the same package. It's hard to tell if the Xbox One controller is still included in this new box, though I think it’s clear Oculus is finally capitulating on the sitting-down-with-a-gamepad-is-the-future-of-VR argument.

[UPDATE: Confirmed that sitting-down-with-a-gamepad-VR is "dead," after years of Oculus messaging to the contrary. Oculus reached out and confirmed to me that there is no Xbox One controller included in the new bundle, which also goes a long way towards explaining the $100 price cut.]

[ Further reading: These 20 absorbing PC games will eat days of your life ]

And purchasing the new Oculus Rift bundle, whether now at the promotional price or later this year, nabs you six free titles—the standouts being Robo Recall, Dead and Buried, and the two art tools Medium and Quill, with Toy Box and ho-hum platformer Lucky’s Tale thrown in for good measure.