Oculus Connect 3 THIS WEEK!

[Tbone]

At long last we'll be getting that ever elusive thing - details! Touch controllers, Oculus Social, and more!

Oculus Connect starts Wednesday, October 5th, but you should expect the big announcements to come at the opening keynote Thursday morning. Join us in Discord Thursday at 12 p.m. CST to react and chat to all the announcements live! See the full Oculus Connect schedule here.

The big news everyone is anticipating is the release date and price of the Touch controllers. Six months after the shaky launch of the Rift, everyone is expecting a fairly quick launch of Touch once details are released. If we're going off of rumors and speculation, there's a lot of Touch games whose release date is slated for around October 21st. If you were one of the ones who pre-ordered the Rift (and consequently got hit with the shipping delay), it wouldn't be surprising if your Touch launches sometime in October.

As for price of the Touch controllers, most evidence (websites leaking the order page early) points to the price being somewhere around $199. It's hard to imagine the Touch controllers being more expensive considering that places the full Oculus package at the same price as HTC's Vive ($800 total). I wouldn't be surprised if Oculus actually tried to undercut that price and make it a little cheaper, but it most likely won't be by much. The extreme optimist in me is hoping they provide Touch for free to those affected by the Rift shipping delays, but I'm not holding my breath.

Looking at the Oculus Connect schedule, it seems there will be a focus on Oculus Social as well. Right now you can only find Oculus Social in beta form on the Gear VR, but Facebook has actually showed off an interesting prototype of a Facebook-integrated social VR platform with Touch controllers. Video below:

http://youtu.be/vzhHCcR6hic

Considering how many multiplayer games are coming to Oculus once Touch is released, it wouldn't be surprising to see Oculus' social platform begin to roll out soon. Currently it is sorely missing and seems like a no-brainer for a VR platform.

You'll want to keep a close eye out for news on these Touch-enabled multiplayer games:

* Dead and Buried
* Ripcoil
* Killing Floor: Incursion
* The Unspoken
* Minecraft
* Star Trek: Bridge Crew

This list doesn't include all of the Steam VR multiplayer games that will be compatible with Rift once Touch comes out! This will be made easier with Oculus' own "chaperone" system called Guardian. This will allow Rift+Touch to comfortably do room-scale games that were originally designed with the Vive in mind.

We should be getting a good number of announcements and details this week, so stay tuned for the latest!

[Duffamongus]

That actually looks way cooler than I expected. I can't wait to see more!