Oculus announced today that its long-awaited PC-based Rift virtual reality headset will be available for preorder starting this Wednesday, January 6, at 8am PST (11am EST). We still don't know precisely when the headset will be available or how much it will cost, but Rift pre-orders will include copies of VR-enabled games Eve: Valkyrie and Lucky's Tale.

The Rift itself is still officially on track for the same "Q1 2016" release window first announced back in May. The hand-tracking Oculus Touch controllers first demonstrated at last year's E3 were recently delayed to the second half of 2016, though; the Rift will initially ship with an Xbox One control pad.

The final price for the consumer unit is an even bigger mystery. Oculus said in October that the consumer edition will cost more than the $350 development kits but would remain "in that ballpark." Back in May, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said that a Rift and a fully specced PC capable of powering it should cost $1,500 total

We can only assume that these important questions will be answered before preorders actually begin (and an Oculus spokesperson tells us "that would be a safe assumption"). Then again, maybe Oculus expects early adopters to go in willing to pay any price to get a product at some nebulous future point (though that seems highly unlikely). In any case, Oculus is planning a Reddit AMA session after preorders begin, starting at 6pm Pacific on Wednesday, so you can be sure these questions will be asked there if they have yet to be answered.

Last May, Oculus announced that players will need a PC with at least 8GB of RAM, an Nvidia GTX 970-level graphics card, and an intel i5-4590 processor to power the Rift. The headset will also require a Windows machine; support for Mac and Linux has been tabled for the time being.