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Ever since the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive debuted, the Vive has had one significant feature that the Rift lacked: handheld controls. While not technically necessary for VR gaming, as many games default to an Xbox controller, the Vive’s support for touch controls was a critical difference that led some sites to endorse it over the Rift — despite the Vive’s $800 price, as opposed to Oculus’ $600. Oculus has been working on its own touch controls for some time, and the company finally debuted them at Oculus Connect this week, along with an expected $200 price tag.

Early feedback from reviewers who have spent time with the controls has been quite positive. The new system comes with a second sensor for detecting the environment around you. If you want a room-scale VR experience like the Vive offers, you’ll need to pony up an additional $79 for a third camera, which does make the Oculus + Touch + third sensor more expensive than the Vive’s base price ($879 versus $800). It’s not yet clear if the third sensor offers Oculus more flexibility in room-scale VR than HTC can offer, or if Oculus will create a bundled SKU that matches the Vive’s $800 price point. Both CNET and Ars Technica have published detailed reports on the various Touch-compatible games and the overall experience of using the hardware.

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