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Oculus VR finalized specifications and release timeframe of its first Oculus Rift virtual reality headset for consumers back in May, but the company has always deliberately declined to disclose the price of the device. At its Oculus Connect conference earlier this week the firm indicated the low end of the Oculus Rift price and also revealed why it has not started to take pre-orders yet.
“We all know it is going to be at least $300,” said Nate Mitchell, vice president of products at Oculus VR, in an interview with PC Gamer.
At the Tokyo Game Show last week Andrew House, chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, said that the PlayStation VR head-mounted display will cost like a new game console, which means $399 right now, or less if Sony cuts the price of its PlayStation 4 by the time the device arrives. Since the first-generation consumer VR headsets use a lot of custom hardware, such as displays, they are not expected to be cheap to manufacture, hence, they will be rather expensive for the end-user. It is not surprising that according to Nate Mitchell the Rift headset will cost at least $300.
Right now Oculus VR is working on final details of the Oculus Rift and does not want to initiate pre-order program because the product is still “far ahead.”
“There isn't a big reason to take your money too far ahead of the device,” said Mr. Mitchell. “What I think about all day long is user experience, right? So if I am going to promise you something and you are going to hand me a significant amount of money or whatever it is – we all know it's going to be at least $300 – if you are going to hand me $300 today, I am not going to be excited to tell you: ‘OK, in nine, 10, 12, 11 months, whatever it is, you're going to get something in return.’ The longer you wait, the more you are like, ‘This is obnoxious.’”
The Oculus Rift VR headset for gamers is set to hit the market in the first quarter of 2016. What is unclear is whether it will be early Q1 or late Q1.
Different market analysts draw different pictures for the market of virtual reality headsets next year. Gartner and Juniper Research believe that various manufacturers – Oculus, HTC/Valve and Sony – will sell two or three million VR headsets in 2016, respectively.
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KitGuru Says: Keeping in mind that Oculus VR and HTC/Valve consider their virtual reality headsets new gaming platforms, they will earn money not (only) by selling hardware, but by charging royalties from game developers. As a result, it is in their best interests to make the actual hardware very affordable. In general, as soon as Oculus VR figures out how many VR games it should expect in 2016 – 2017 and what the attach rate is going to be, it can determine the final price of its VR HMD. Until then, the MSRP will not be revealed.
So you are paying $300+ and you still get advertisements? What happened to selling it at near factory cost to ensure mass adoption? How does this price justify the purchase by Facebook?
Insightful comment at the end there, KitGuru. Makes a lot of sense out of the news.
They probably looked at the 3D TV example and saw that the premium justification wasn’t obvious. Add to that 4K’s price taking a nose dive… i think there’s been some hard lessons learnt. Majority are happy with 720/1080p and a huge premium of the new thing just won’t convince anyone.
Oculus have looked at 3D in TV and said… “We don’t want slow uptake”
these companies aren’t smart enough to know that there is at least one entire generation of gamers who will have to be thoroughly convinced about VR, before they ever consider spending a dime. So many failed peripherals from the earlier years, and using VR from the late 90’s, have made this product a non-starter for me personally. I don’t see this as becoming the next big thing. How many people have the money to upgrade their rig so that VR will work, and then drop the extra hundreds on the VR and games?
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Oculus Rift DK1 and DK2 were both beyond anyones expectations, having worked with those they are really neat and the consumer version will only be better. Ofcourse it is a luxery good, meaning not everyone will be able to afford them or purchase them as it isn’t a necessity for gaming, but I and many others would drop a few hundreds for some VR. Ofcourse I will be picky about the brand, but hey VR is VR.
Gonna be a tough sale, if I have £300 spare it’s going towards a 4k monitor
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The kinect, Sony move gun(move stick with gun attachment) and either totem, HTC/valve or Sony VR headset, mix all that into a game that makes good and logic use of it all and im sold.
Out of principle that OcRift are now owned by fbook I have no intention to ever buy it no matter if it becomes the best headset ever