The $600 Oculus Rift cannot run virtual reality applications on its own. The VR headset can only function when connected to a powerful PC which OEMs are glad to provide at a premium.
Alienware announced that it will provide a line of Oculus Certified systems. The lineup currently consists of one PC: the Alienware X51 which starts at $1,200 for an Intel Core i5-6400, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 970 GPU and 8GB of RAM. Alienware also allows buyers to customize the X51's hardware specs, and the price can easily go up to more than $2,400 according to the selected options.
Before the Rift pre-orders began, Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe promised that "if you have to go out and actually need to buy a new computer and you're going to buy the Rift... at most you should be in that $1,500 range." Perhaps you may be able to match that price range if you built your on PC instead of buying an OEM one, but we really doubt a hardcore gamer would settle for an i5 and an upper-middle tier graphics card.