It makes sense to me. The Vive includes the two gesture-based controllers and two laser boxes, while the Rift only comes with a remote and a xbox one controller. I really wish I could be a first adopter of the Vive but the PC requirements are too steep for me right now. I am currently waiting on nvidia's new cards to come out to start building up a modern pc (I'm still running an i5-2500k) and then I will be able to start saving for a headset. I remember trying VR back in the mid-90's and boy was it shit but this stuff looks great and I think with facebook behind the rift and valve with steam vr things are going to continue to get better and better.

My two cents,

Dweez

Sounds about right. My monitor was 799 because it's newer tech, and VR is even newer tech, so I'm not surprised.

That's cheaper than I was expecting, but still too much for me. I'm going to wait until there is compelling software for these headsets. I still haven't seen any games that look compelling outside of the wow factor of playing in VR. In a year or two these things will either be dramatically cheaper, or dramatically better (smaller, lighter, better tracking, etc.).

Obviously if I had infinite money I'd buy both and it's a very close call. I have an XBox One which should align me perhaps with the rift, but at the moment I'm not interested in having FaceBook invading my personal space so that I can use a peripheral (I don't know how that pans out). I have a Facebook account but I don't share stuff on it so that's not a draw for me. I'm mostly a PC gamer with a fairly large Steam collection (of mostly non-VR games), if I find out that Rift can work with VR games available on Steam in a similar way then I might choose differently. I'm also watching for sales on PS4 consoles, so all bets have long odds at the moment.

So that will be around 1000 euros here. Hmm, I guess I have to contemplate this carefully.

@peacebrother: I hadn't really thought about the correlation to monitors. By that standard, it kinda seems like a deal.

I am not convinced, but for that price difference, the vive seems like a more interesting prospect.
We'll see when they get it in people's hands.

It sits squarely in the "More expensive than I'd hoped, less expensive than I'd feared" category of pricing, so man, good job Oculus on coming out with their price point early and ticking everybody off so HTC didn't have to.

After the price reveal for the Oculus I'm not surprised about this specifically, but it's still a bummer that we're essentially still in the same price range for VR headsets that we were in 1994, where the VFX-1 (which was one of the cheaper headsets with head tracking and stereoscopic 3D) launched at $695 (edit: ~$1100 with inflation).

In order for VR to take off this time, I think it'll have to be more affordable. Of course, assuming it survives, it'll become cheaper over time, so I guess we'll have to hope that the early adopters can keep it alive until then.

I'm gonna skip first generation PC VR because my PC isn't ready either. Probably PS VR if anything for me, if it comes in between $300 and $400. Because Jesus those prices! Plus the cost of upgrading my CPU! Plus my 970 barely cuts it!

It may be the future, but this kind of future is a bit out of reach for price-conscious folks.

My answer is "wait for reviews." (Also waiting for the Rift Touch controller and to see which games make better use of the respective kit).

Oculus must be kicking themselves

Adjusted for inflation, that is over $1,100 today. Just something worth considering.

Yeah, but wouldn't you consider that in the same ballpark? At least in the EU, I'm pretty sure all these headsets will be over 1000€, probably in the 1100-1200€ range.

@fisk0: Yeah, same ballpark, but it's still cheaper by almost 30% in the US. It just always bugs me when people list prices from the past as a comparison without mentioning inflation.

Just Sony left to price up. Its an arms face. For your face. In their cyberspace.

Sure, I did have the price with inflation and should probably have included that in the post in retrospect. But then it's probably worth considering that $695 in 1994 was way less than you'd pay for a regular home PC at the time (a regular Pentium PC was around $2500 in 1994 bucks), whereas $799 is pretty comparable to what we'd pay for a relatively high end gaming PC today (at least if you assemble it yourself). So we're talking peripherals that were about 1/3rd the price of a PC in 1994 and something that is about 1:1 today. With Moore's law I'd have expected the price of VR hardware to have gone down over time relative to the cost of a PC.

I would expect that to be true only if the technology was actually iterated upon for the last 20 years... but it wasn't. It died out completely and is just now becoming something companies are investing real money into.

Assuming this time it actually takes off, in another 5-10 years you'll see the price drop down substantially.

(nitpick: Moore's Law has absolutely nothing to do with pricing... like at all.)

I say fuck no!

VR is a bit of a pipe dream for the foreseeable future to me unfortunately, due to the crazy dollar overvaluation in my country (1 dollar = 4 local currency) because of our shitty government it's literally impossible for me to buy these things, and that considering only the suggested price and not taking into consideration import taxes, shipping, reseler cut... by then it becomes twice as impossible.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Huh, looking it up now, you seem to be right. I've often heard it quoted as something like "you'll spend the same amount for a twice as powerful PC in two years".

I just got out of the Navy. I've been planning on building a high end gaming PC when I got out for awhile now, and right now it looks like I'll be going skylake and waiting for nvidias new GPU to hit this year. So I'll have a PC capable of running this stuff, and I have the money to buy one of them.

I'm not going to buy yet, and here's why:

First the use case on early adopting just isn't there. Aside from some novelty games to showcase the new tech, there isn't anything that interests me. I want VR so I can lose myself in an immersive world for dozens of hours.

Second, I'm not interested in working out bugs and performance issues with a brand new GPU on a brand new application. I would rather just play through my backlog at 60 fps and high resolutions when I have time to game.

I am super interested in how VR turns out, but until they have some stable games that interest me, the cost just isn't worth a few novelty hours of entertainment.

At this point there is very little reason to pick either one in case you are not a die hard early adopter.

As with other technology that has been pitched to change the way we consume media before, I need to be convinced that it enriches the experience. The initial impressions of people who tried it out tend to be very positive, but it's also clear that VR will change the way media gets created in the first place. The initial offerings seem to be more often proof of concept like smaller projects and it will take some time for developers to figure out what works and what doesn't.

Also it will take some time to see which variant comes out strongest and if 3rd party support will be good across the board.

There are just too much uncertainties connected to VR at this stage that I can't justify that investment in front of myself.

Dependent on how the new Nvidia GPU generation shakes out I planned to upgrade my PC late this year or in 2017 and might look more serious into VR then earliest - probably even later than that.

Yeah no, to both. Ask again in 5 years, assuming that VR actually takes off despite the high starting prices and PC requirements, with no software to justify the purchase.

It's all on PS VR/

It's a catch 22 for the VR companies. They need early adopters to put units out there to persuade developers to make content. There is a similar analogue to Nintendo, except that Nintendo has amazing first party games.

Cheaper than I was honestly expecting, but I have zero interest in being an early adopter of VR.

I reject the future as it seems quite shitty

It's Playstation VR or bust for me personally. I want to try it at Pax East and make sure it doesn't make me sick. If it doesn't, I'll consider it at $400 or below.

Unless you have spare money lying around at this point in time I don't see any reason why anyone would spend money on any of these VR helmets instead of investing it into a top of the line video card.

Everyone forget about hololens :(

@ripelivejam: That's AR, not VR. Kind of a different thing.

If gaming doesn't kick start VR then I'm hoping applications in industry will get it going this time around. Astronauts are using it which is a start, but it needs to become a tool that can be used in the work place. An example would be that if you're having a part of your house (e.g. kitchen) worked on, you could select placement of units such as storage, dishwasher, cooker and then have a design that is open to scrutiny if there's a contest about the requirement afterwards. (Obviously those are basic things, but finishing touches would be the detail in question).

Price makes sense.

Already have my Rift on order though. Think I'll put my eggs in that basket for now. If Vive is that much better (which I don't think it is.. it just already has the hand bits), I'll buy the Vive as well. And then also buy the PSVR when that comes out.

Edit: Then again.. Maybe I will just order one because of tax refund.. Hmmm.

PSVR!

I'll wait for the next generation of VR that will be both better and cheaper.

Godspeed to early adopters!

The Vive was the most impressive of the VR headsets I've tried. Definitely expected this to be the most expensive. Also the demo had a guy who's only job was to keep the wires out of your way. That concerns me, especially with whole-room VR.

I wish there was a "I'll wait for a bit" option. I want to take part in the crazy VR world but I think i'll wait at least for a hardware revision.

I will probably skip the current generation of VR devices entirely if PSVR is priced over 500 euros. Especially when most of the games which support VR arent that interesting to me.

I hope my decision to wait doesn't mean the death of VR. I wish there was a way I could tell a company that my not-purchasing something has to do with price, not because I don't want the product.

E3 2016, Shuhei Yoshida walks out onto the stage. Doesn't say anything, just scans the room. A picture of Playstation VR appears on the screen behind him. He slowly raises the mic to his lips, "$99. Get fucked, bitches." Fireworks go off behind him as he drops the mic, turns around, and walks off stage.

In all seriousness, I'm even more curious as to what Sony will price theirs at. I thought $300-400 was wishful thinking at best and I feel like with all of their competition now well over that mark, that price range seems absurdly low. That said, if they did somehow price it that low, it sure would make a lot of fucking headlines.

@babychoochoo: The potential problem I see here is Sony looking at the reactions at prices on the Rift and Vive and then adjusting their price target to be that much lower and cutting costs back via hardware quality.

I don't want them to release some $200 kit if its going to be a Fisher-Price tier product. If $500+ dollars is the technical barrier to entry to make a VR experience that isn't bad, then I believe that is what needs to be done. I just don't see how it is possible for two similar pieces of hardware to be at hugely different price points unless there is a massive monetary loss on units or hardware specs/quality is dropped.

I could see them doing $400 though. That seems about the bottom level of quality/performance I'd want for something hoping to be more mainstream. +$50 for a PS Move controller set. $600 bundle for PS4 + PSVR headset.

I'm hoping that they can get rid of the Vive cables without too much latency kicking in. I think there's a growing number of people who don't have the space (or ability) to walk around a room for a number of reasons, and they'd usually be sitting down in front of a TV or at a desk with a monitor. If Kinect and Move were a good attempt last time around, they failed on unrealistic promises. If they can make it work for games and apps for people with limited space then it could sell.

I think the prices of these two headsets indicates that the tech isn't there yet.If they want it to catch on, this price point is not adequate. In 10 years maybe they'll try again and the headset will be 700 with a machine that can run games for it. Maybe then people will buy in, right now this is just for us loonies with giant game computers.

We could have had a quality VR headset in the 90's or the early 2000's, it would have been a few thousand but it could have been done. This is an improvement on that, but it's still wicked expensive, the ability to make something versus the ability to make it economical are different things. Without being a gaming site all the time, why would we have even heard of this?

I'll be surprised if PSVR is less than $499.

I believe 360 video is on its way to real estate, but I could imagine how useful this could be to a contractor for their customers to preview a home design.

It is interesting how people went insane with the Rift's $200 cheaper price, but now everyone is so casually "that makes sense" at $200 more. People are strange.

The Vive is the one that basically requires you to set up a VR dedicated room for it right? That's a deal breaker for me even if the thing was cheap. That is not the VR headset for people living in apartments.

Thoughts:

a) I figured the Vive would be at least $1000; I wonder what kind of profit margin they're actually making at $799. As far as I know, there are no licensing fees for developers to make and sell games on any VR headsets yet, right (if I'm wrong, please let me know)? If that's the case, these companies can't exactly sell at a loss like we're used to consoles doing.

b) Oculus must be sad; you're getting a lot more for that extra $200 if you go with the Vive over the Oculus, and for most VR Generation 1 early adopters, an extra $200 is probably not that big of a deal.

c) I still haven't seen an actual reason to purchase one of these things early; VR needs some killer apps beyond roller coasters and jump scares and toyboxes, and I hope that these companies can convince developers to make actual, unique-to-the-medium games and experiences that don't just look like tech demos before it's too late.

d) All eyes on Sony now. If they come in above $400, I'm afraid these companies will have kneecapped the entire VR movement before it can even get started. I hope they're able to wait out the early-adopter period without giving up, because between pricing and the lack of 'real' games, it seems like most people are going to wait until the dust settles before jumping on.

I say it's probably bad that I have literally never heard of the HTC Vive until Austin's article popped up. If you want $700 of my money, you'd better at least do enough marketing that I know what the fuck your product is.

I also say VR is going to go the way of the Kinect - a potentially awesome thing done in by the fact that game devs have zero idea of what to do with it or how to make a game for it. Get ready for a lot of shitty VR dance games and VR sports games.

I'm so sick of hearing about VR. I was sick of it a year ago. This price makes me continue to be sick of it.

I'm more shocked that you're a premium GB subscriber and haven't heard about it. They've been talking about it for months.