PlayStation VR finally has a price and release date, with Sony revealing more details of its much-anticipated virtual-reality headset at San Francisco's Game Developers Conference, Digital Spy reports.

The Daft Punk-esque gaming visor for Sony's PS4 console is ready to hit our heads this October and will set buyers back $490, keeping it within the predicted pricing of a new console. That's some $210 cheaper than its Facebook-backed Oculus Rift rival and $480 cheaper than HTC's Vive, Digital Spy said.

The appealing PlayStation package, unveiled at a short keynote at the annual Californian tech fair, includes a free download of Play Room VR, a family-friendly multiplayer collection of six mini-games that hopes to be the Wii Sports-esque family gateway into virtual reality.

The headset also comes bundled with stereo headphones and a processor unit, which mirrors the VR output on your big telly for others to interact with/laugh at. It also powers the Cinematic mode, which lets PS VR act as a personal movie viewer, showing off cinema-sized films and 360-degree photos on a 225-inch virtual screen, just two and a half metres from your face.

Originally slated for the 'first half of 2016', the release of the peripheral formerly known as Project Morpheus has been shifted back presumably because a) the PS4 is still selling very well on its own, thank you very much, b) more time was needed to polish up the games, and c) summer isn't the best time to try and get people to shun the sun and hide behind a headset.

PS VR has more than 160 games in development and will squeeze 50 out before the end of the year, including Ubisoft's Eagle Flight, Guerrilla Games' RIGS and Sony's own VR Worlds, incorporating The London Heist, The Deep and Street Luge demos, which compares favourably to Oculus's 30-title launch haul.

The price may surprise some, but PlayStation chiefs have long been upfront about where PS VR sits in the grand scheme of virtual-reality things, Digital Spy said.

Sony Worldwide Studios chief Shuhei Yoshida has been very open about Sony's mass-market and wallet-friendly aspirations, while Playstation Executive VP Masayasu Ito said that while Oculus's headset produces a higher quality of VR, it requires a specialist gaming PC that comes at a much higher price than the PS4.