An Oculus Rift setup could cost more than Xbox One, PS4 combined

Oculus Rift

At this point, your Xbox One and PS4 are in a pretty good position to take on the virtual reality throne once Project Morpheus and Microsoft HoloLens come out.

Each console costs around $350 in the US (£299/£279, AU$498/AU$549.95 for each console, respectively) and though pricing for the headsets haven't been released yet, it's safe to assume they'll both be between $400-$600 (about £254/AU$498 to £381/AU$747). If you already own a console, then the additional cost of a Morpheus or HoloLens shouldn't be too cringeworthy.

Compare that with our breakdown of what PCs need to make an Oculus Rift run like a dream and try not to weep too much.

Oculus Rift for PC price breakdown

So far we know the SDK2 version of Rift is $350 (about £400/AU$435) but the price will likely increase.

An Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD 290 equivalent or greater will cost around $400 (about £254/AU$498) and up if you want a meaty video card.

An Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater will cost around $200 (about £127/AU$249) and up depending on processor speed.

8GB RAM will add on $80 (about £51/AU$100) but again this price could head north if you want to boost up to 16GB of RAM, though adding more memory for optimized gaming has been a debatable subject in the past.

In total, you'll end up spending around $1,030 (about £654/AU$1,282), and that's not factoring in the hard drive, power supply, an updated Windows OS and new tower.

If you already have a beast of a machine, then a few upgrades here and there shouldn't hurt too much. But for the average person, the cost of a virtual reality experience on a PC using the Oculus Rift is a bit steep.

  • The first PC gaming conference will take place at this year's E3!