Oculus Rift Will be More Than $350 Due to Added Tech for the Best Experience - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 October 2015 / 7,423 Views
The Oculus Rift, when it finally launces early next year, will cost more than $350, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has revealed. The reason given for the high price point is that the company has included added technology to ensure the best experience possible.
"You know, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you," said Luckey. "We’re roughly in that ballpark… but it’s going to cost more than [$350]. And the reason for that is that we’ve added a lot of technology to this thing beyond what existed in the DK1 and DK2 days."
"And it’s not a matter of ‘oh we’re selling more, we can make more money!’ it’s just the reality that when you make this thing you have to decide what tradeoffs you’re going to make; are you going to optimize for absolute lowest price possible, even if it’s gonna be a lower quality experience? Or do you try to say ‘you know what, this is the first consumer VR headset that were going to be pushing out to people."
"We need to put a stake in the ground and say: this is the best possible experience that we were able to make. No compromises were made in terms of quality’. Get the cost down as much as you can on that experience, but make it so that the Rift is something that everybody wants to use to the best of your ability."
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Good luck selling it
Much better system and quality over that crap Sony's copying. Always support the innovators!
1350 for roller coaster simulators? realistically it would be cheaper to book a holiday for the family to disney land.... maybe twice.
If you think taking a whole family to Disney is possible for $1,350, you haven't been there in awhile lol
$350/plane ticket * 4 = $1,400. I can add all the other costs too if you really want.
Pff... flop confirmed.
I'll most likely buy the Playstation VR, when it comes out. No chance of me getting this one though.
You have bad gaming taste if you think Sony has anything better planned. Traditionally, they always fail at launch.
I don't play PC games, so there's no point in me getting an Oculus.
Reading the two other comments I can agree that this likely priced itself outside of the average console gamer, but I think the first generation of true VR was INEVITABLY going to cost about this much. I suspect the PC market will more than make up for it and, if it proves worthy of the investment, console gamers will likely grow envious enough to take the plunge themselves in time.
That's really not a bad price. I'm going to get a Playstation VR, at launch hopefully. I have been financially ravaged lately, no debt, but I had to blow all my savings. I will pay up to $400 for it if the tech is as good as I'm being led to believe.
This is what happens when Facebook owns a stake.
Here's an idea - sell a "classic" edition without all the stinking bells and whistles, and a "premium" edition with.
Last month they announced that you were going to need a PC in the $900 to $1000. With this "added tech" will somebody with a $600 PC be able to run VR with your product or not?
They mean a 1000$ pc AND a 350$+ VR headset (1350$+ total).
I wonder if the price would be this high had facebook not bought them. They do need to turn a much larger profit now to justify FB spending $2 billion on the company.
I imagine it's just expensive to create. Facebook has been pretty savvy at making money, and simply raising the price doesn't always do that.
If anything, Facebook buying them may have allowed them to keep the price lower than it may otherwise have been... I think Zuckerberg has plans beyond games for this technology.
Like Microsoft with holo lens :p
@Johnw1104 Hm yes I'm forgetting that. It's a bit like how when you switch on xbox there's all those damned adverts on the tiles. There never used to be of course, but once the install base was high enough it appeared. It's the sole reason I'll never buy another MS console actually. You don't pay that much cash for a machine for it to shove ads on people when the competition doesn't do it.
Honestly, if it's really cool I can see myself saving up $350 for it. Really, at that point it'd be such a unique experience which warrants, in my mind, a price similar to a console.
Heck, my video card cost more than that. I'd probably just start putting $50 aside a week and get it eventually... assuming, again, that it's awesome. When I think of the potential it might have for a game like Alien: Isolation, though, I really get psyched for it.
They've priced it way out of the range of most gamers. I was interested, but I can't afford that much. Not to mention the company's recent comments on how the motion sickness issue wasn't a hardware problem but issues with software...
And what is bad about that statement?
