My earlier facetious reply aside, I imagine that this is driving the price down. I don't think they're expecting a huge uptake on this so they can't bank on any economies of scale or anything. I have no idea what sort of licensing arrangements they are pursuing, but people in this thread are suggesting they are being quite cagey about what they allow to be put out on this thing, so that might be a concern as well.

I think there are a lot of companies watching this and waiting to see what kind of market can be generated once this thing actually exists - and how much value there is in pursuing the R&D to reduce cost - Oculus included. Facebook's backing primarily allows them to take the risk, and weather out the waiting period without sinking. I imagine.

I actually kind of think the real future of VR might be in arcades - where some of the absolutely ridiculous bullshit you see coming out of E3 and PAX (like that stupid treadmill thing for walking, plastic guns and so on) makes a lot more sense.

Boom.

@myzzzz said:

At least when I buy a $600 GPU, I can use that for multiple products or even research or what have you. VR, at its current form, is a one-trick pony and these pair of goggles are for a singular purpose.

The niche market is not enough to carry VR on their backs until game comes out and the price becomes less of a heart attack, let alone a niche market that's already very divided about the pricing of this pair of binoculars.

@frytup: I can tell you that before i sold my DK2 in prep for the CV, it wasnt uncommon for me to spend 4-5 hours at a time wearing my oculus to play elite:dangerous, windlands, etc. The CV is supposed to be more ergonomically sound as well, which means it will hopefully be even more comfortable for extended use (the dk2 wasnt bad at all).

$600 for a thing that also requires another huuuuge money investment for a pc to pair it to. I don't think we're as ready for VR as the gaming industry was saying. The tech is there (maybe) but it's still years off from being viable.

£500... sorry but no thank you. VR might be the future but not at those prices. They're having a laugh right?

I could buy some solid new PC components for that sort of money and I'm almost certain I'd get more use out of them.

I don't think the target market for Oculus Rift is people who don't already have, or weren't in the market for, a high-end PC. Besides, it's not as if the PC can't do anything else except act as a host for the Rift.

eBay is looking fun right now lol

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=oculus+rift&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR11.TRC2.A0.H0.Xoculus+rift+201.TRS1&_nkw=oculus+rift+2016&_sacat=0

Clearly VR isn't close to being as ready for a mainstream audience as we were led to believe.

Curious about Sony's headset, if that's a similar price then I will be writing the whole thing off for another decade, sadly.

I went ahead and ordered one. You can cancel up to the ship date, so why not? The price is a bit on the high side for me. I was expecting $499 and hoping for less. I didn't think it would come with a controller though. I don't think the price says anything to the state of VR or its future. Like anything in tech, when the tech first hits it is expensive. This is actually pretty cheap compared to other display device technology when it first launched.

Wow.

Meanwhile, the price of DK2's on Craigslist has fallen by about 50% overnight. Earlier this week there were numerous dev kits for sale for over $1,000.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sss?is_paid=all&search_distance_type=mi&query=oculus

Actually less than I expected it to cost.

But then when it gets to retailers in Sweden it will no doubt suddenly cost closer to equiv. $1000.

Any chance that they are starting at those price point because they will only have to make it cheaper from here, and also they know that early adopters will pay it? They sold out 15 mins so they did something right.

And now they can cut the cost later in the year when production is inevitably cheaper and they actually have competition.

They also might not want a huge roll out at first so that people become accustomed to it.

I guess the real question is, why would they charge less at this stage? It will never be more expensive than it is right now.

I've got like 3 sides of my personality arguing now,

1, the childish immature side, basically it's saying Really ? that's your launch price why don't you just charge 1k for it because it really now makes no difference to the majority of people who wanted one, £500 or $600 are they for real ? NOT INCLUDING SHIPPING really ? that's what you got, remember the ps3 launch pricing where no one clapped and most people thought there must have been a mistake, right guys? that's a mistake right ?

and they want that much and more for a peripheral there not selling platform at the end of the day their selling a peripheral, all right yeah it could be a freaking good one but how would most of us know that we can't afford that price to find out,

2 My mature Business side of the brain, i can see that that is probably a price they feel they can make money back on whilst being a low as possible, still its making the Rift a pretty exclusive club, and admission is pretty steep if you have the computer for it, and early adopters always pay more.

3 The Gamer side, which is saying so you want £500 & $600 (Not including shipping) ok fine, take the xbox pad out, take the games out what does that make it, ? are their any other options for people that don't want pay that much but are still willing to get their wallet out but besides that 2 games come with it lucky's tale and EVE but what about after that , that's a lot for 2 lets call them first party games for now. how long until that money because a bad investment because of waiting for more games to come, and sure you could get loads of indie stuff from their store but you still gotta pay for all that 2, where are the games ?

anyway needed to get that off the old chest,

i will admit most of that is my childish I WANT ONE and can't afford it side of the brain but im still pretty convinced my other arguments make a point, still i will have to wait and see how all you guys who do get one find it,

Oculus is in this for the long haul. They are not expecting VR to become a huge success overnight. They are probably looking at 10 years before VR is truly mainstream and affordable. Not too mention that early VR is going to be rough. It is going to be like PS1 era where nobody even knew how to handle controls, camera, and interactions in 3D. It is 20 years later for 3D video games and those things are still not perfect.

Something that will help that transition from the "iphone" to the "android" is also VR finding its feet in an acceptable use format. Already Oculus seems to be ok with the "sit down on a chair and hold a controller", while Vive wants do do the "whole room" experience and wave around wands (not ignoring Oculus touch). It will be up to future consumers and their dollars to say "we like the reality of walking around the room", or "fuck that, you aint getting my lazy ass of this couch" (I fall in the latter). VR could also go into an entirely new direction that might only happen after this experimental eraly adopter phase is over, and that's when I see your "iphone" to "android" analogy really start to come into play.

I was interested in the tech. Saw the price, thought, "Sure, early adoption is expensive but I can afford it and am willing to pay it" and got a March wave order in. I'm not sure why everyone is losing their shit and proclaiming the death of the platform. Now I'm going to back to not really thinking about VR until my kit arrives, then I'll see how it plays.

Mine is expected to arrive at May. I guess if it sucks I'll just cancel my preorder

You could argue that they could have sold out at just about any price, given the . . . ahem . . . enthusiasm of some of the early adopters. The problem comes in the execution. Those early adopters are going to be the bellwether for everyone else. If you sell something for $600 bucks, you have $600 bucks worth of expectations. If Oculus 1.0 is in the "good not great" category, a lot of those early adopters are going to be equally enthusiastic about saying how much it sucks, which'll kill sales down the line for everyone else, regardless of price point.

I've kinda decided 600 ($940 shipped to canada) is too much for new tech.

I'll sit this one out and see whats still relevant in 2017. Got some travel coming up in Feb. anyway.

Wasn't sold on the product before and that price definitely keeps me from even thinking about the purchase.

Even funnier is Lucky Palmer enthusiastically telling people, "and PC bundles start at $1499! Good price for normal people."

lmfao, OK Palmer. Facebook/OR is a company that can afford to take a big loss on a product to get it out to the general public, but they didn't. That being said this isn't the death of OR or VR. Also, this doesn't help VR/VR isn't the future of games.

No thanks, I'll let other people beta test it and reduce the price for me before I buy one.

I'll never forget how I got badly burned after buying the XB1 and PS4 at launch from hype.

750 euros? Man. That's 150 euros too much. That's like a brick wall of money. That's my whole salary, ain't no way I'll have that kind of money to burn by March. And my PC is nowhere near the required specs, so I'd need a new graphics card to boot.

Shucks. Well, I'll see what Valve does.

I laughed.

Europe getting shafted hard. What the eff is this nonsene?

I'm going to wait this out because I'm still on the fence on whether to get the Vive or Oculus

And it's not like the Oculus Rift can do anything at all unless it is paired with a beeeefy machine that can do cool stuff.

I disagree completely that the target market is only people that have giant machines. It's now a Facebook product. I feel like I'm within the target market for Oculus and I have no intention of buying a beefier gaming machine for a long time. And even if the target market is people that are looking to upgrade their PC it still means that the price tag on this thing is a lot higher than $600 (an already hefty price) for all of those people. It's a huge demand.

Are people falling for this? It's not like you can't still preorder for the actual price right now.

http://www.vg247.com/2016/01/06/oculus-rift-releases-in-march-and-will-set-you-back-600/

Oh never mind, but for some reason I still have one sitting in my Oculus shopping cart (after refreshing)

@zojirushi: That's pretty much always the case with electronics and hardware.

I bought a Cintiq like 5 years ago in the US and the price difference compared to buying it at home ALMOST motivated the plane tickets. It was literally half price.

Yeah.... No thanks....

If I didn't have to wait basically half a year for one to get to me I would order one today.

The price is the obvious sticking point with everyone and I don't see the Vive being significantly cheaper. If anything Sony's offering would potentially be the cheapest. I'm not too worried about the Rift not working out of the box since both dev kits have been out in the wild for some time. The issue of adoption by developers will always be a concern with this niche though. I can see developers working in certain genres (simulators and such) adding support for VR but outside of those areas I don't know what kind of adoption it will ever have.

I'm not sure what Oculus being owned by Facebook has to do with the target demographic for the Oculus Rift. This thing has been geared towards the enthusiast market since day one, at no point has Oculus (or Facebook) ever positioned the Rift as a mass market device for everyone.

@selfconfessedcynic: Interesting, I haven't run a 3DMark in awhile. I'll have to test it out. Have a feeling my 4690k and 970 may fall a tad short.

It's because the early shipment dates.

They totally have. They've been talking about how it's going to be used for movies and a bunch of stuff outside of the gaming space. And it being own by Facebook means that it's owned by a company that is the face of mass market consumption.

I've been following the Oculus Rift pretty closely, and saying it's been targeted at the mass market seems completely inaccurate to me. Your whole Facebook argument likewise seems a lot like saying Audi sports cars are targeted at everyone just because they are owned by Volkswagen. It just doesn't make any sense.

Luckey himself has been going on and on about how how the Rift isn't for everyone yet. He was even quoted recently as saying, "VR will become something everyone wants before something everyone can afford." He's been saying stuff like this, publicly, since before DK2 even came out.

Its too much for me to just jump in.
I'll wait until it has a bunch of games.

Oculus' co-founders have previously said they'd like to stay between $200 and $400. Mitchell was vague on more details. "One of the really important things for us is always to make it affordable. We want to reach a state where we have hundreds of millions if not billions of people in VR," he said. "We do ultimately see VR as a mass-market product."

Not saying that you're wrong, because the Rift definitely isn't a mass-market thing right now, but people definitely had reason to believe it would be cheaper/aimed at a mass-market audience. It probably will be in a few years.

That other quote is from a year ago. Still, the last thing I can find them talking about in regards to pricing was a few months ago when Luckey said “We’re roughly in that ballpark … but it’s going to cost more than that" in reference to the $350 dev kit. So it's not like they were doing a good job of setting expectations recently, either.

That's around $1000 Canadian with tax and shipping.

No.

So how are these people figuring out their estimated ship date anyway?

I'm fairly mad (at myself?) because I swear I read this was going to happen on Thursday. I set a bunch of reminders on my phone because I'd be at work.

Today is my day off so I was out doing stuff and when I sat back down and refreshed Kotaku, I saw the $600 price point and had a "heh" moment until I saw the words "pre-orders opened" and then raced to place the order.. I did have a tiny moment to question myself.. but F it.

I guess I got mine in like an hour and a half after they opened them? Don't see anything about a specific estimated month on my order anywhere.

That is how I feel. I bought a GTX 980 last summer, so I'm okay spending decent money for great gaming experiences. My biggest problem is there hasn't been a game announced for VR where I think "I have to play that." I played a decent amount of Elite: Dangerous, and I bet it is awesome to play in VR. But I can't justify paying $600 for something that may not get much use from me.

It was on the front of Time magazine, that's the opposite of the market you're talking about, and it is being promoted all over the internet. All sorts of outlets, not just gaming and tech outlets, have sponsored content about Oculus. I think Palmer Luckey is smart and he understands where the true market is but there's a ton of marketing outside of his promotion.

I need a new video card on top of the price of the rift damn I haven't seen high specs like this since Crysis. My biggest question will it have backwards compatibility I know there's special drivers you have to pay for call Vorpex or something but really I don't care about lucky's tale. I just want to fly a plane in GTA5 with some free bird playing looking out the window at the vinewood sign.

@dryvby: I seem to remember oculus going after people that were doing this with the DK1, and cancelling their shipments? I hope they can track this some way, because thats crazy.

@mefipulate: The $649 it shows should be in AUD. I asked their support just to check and they said it converts.

The user agreement for the dev kit models specifically stated that they were not to be resold. I'm sure many were resold in spite of that, but those were the stated terms and they were enforced in some cases.

I don't know for sure, but I seriously doubt the consumer version comes with any such restriction attached to it.

I've done the same. If I can cancel whenever I want, no loss in getting in there now.

Did you read the article, or are you just talking about the picture on the cover? I did read it, it's primarily about the future of the technology and what the possibilities are.

I'm talking about it being in Time magazine at all. That is not a magazine for the target demographic you're talking about. And I did read it. The content of the article is irrelevant to the point I'm making. They are trying to make this a mass market product.