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Comment by bowmessage | Hacker News Reader

Going to have to pass on $599. More than I was expecting.

Ditto. $600 is well outside of the impulse buy range for me that this would have had to be priced at ($350 would be an automatic buy, $400 I'd consider, $600 no), and I bought a DK1 (though through Oculus, not through Kickstarter) and have a pretty substantial amount of expendable spending money.

It is interesting to me that the first impulse of so many people in this thread is to try to logically justify the price in the face of people saying they won't buy it -- I'm not saying those people are wrong when comparing the price to a high end monitor or graphics cards, it just isn't relevant to whether or not I'm willing to buy this at $600.

My decision not to buy this doesn't mean I don't think the device is worth the money being asked for everyone, nor do I think Oculus/FB is wrong for pricing it thusly, it is just more than I am personally willing to pay for something that is a fairly niche novelty at this point.

At the current asking price it is very easy for me to justify waiting until gen 2 or gen 3 when things are much cheaper and there's even more support out there.

Seems to be €699 in Europe ($750)

(edit: This price does not include shipping.)

That price includes VAT. According to google 599 USD is 557 EUR. Add VAT to that, e.g. Finnish 24%, and you get 691 EUR. Not that far from the 699 EUR listed price.

You don't add Finnish 24% VAT but the VAT of the country where the EU branch of the company is based - most likely Luxembourg with its 15% VAT rate. (All Amazon deliveries to the Eurozone come from Amazon EU SARL in Luxembourg, for instance).

Which means the fair price would be EUR 640, almost 10% lower.

VAT is based on the buyer's country for digital goods/services [1], and in other cases (such as this) if the sales exceed 100 000 EUR per year. [2][3] In some countries, like Finland, the limit is even lower at 35 000 EUR per year. [4] So if Oculus expects to sell more than 50 copies of the Rift to Finland, it will have to pay the Finnish VAT.

Also, Luxembourg's VAT is 17% nowadays. [5]

[1] https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A30464Q6OVH578

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax...

[3] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-what-to-do-if-youre-an-overs...

[4] http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/resources/documents/tax...

[5] http://www.vatlive.com/european-news/luxembourg-vat-rise-17-...

Have to also account for labor costs being higher in Europe, I'd bet.

CA$849, which pretty much matches the exchange rate, plus $65 shipping and tax (~$120 for most of Canada).

I can't access the page, is this the official price? Was expecting something around the 400$-450$ range. This costs as much as a full blown PC.

Yep. And that's a subsidized price too, according to Palmer.

https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/684511706677030912

$599.00 is the official price before tax and shipping.

a 599 PC is not going to have a GPU strong enough to give you any decent VR, 599 is about the starting point for the GPU only, I would honestly not go with anything less than a 980ti for a minimum of future-proofing, and unless you already have one I would wait for a Pascal card, which in any case will cost at least that much.

in VR dropping frames / latency directly maps to motion sickness, so it's not a case of "eh, I can deal with the framerate not being super solid" like it can be on normal gaming.

This costs less than some flagship cellphones, 599 is definitely not that much all things considered.

> in VR dropping frames / latency directly maps to motion sickness, so it's not a case of "eh, I can deal with the framerate not being super solid" like it can be on normal gaming.

Do you have any articles/papers about this? I'm not doubting you, just curious!

don't have any papers specifically about the correlation between framerate / judder and sickness but this older article has some information

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/down-the-vr-rabbit-hol...

as somebody who has major issues with their inner ear I can guarantee that you really do NOT want to get vertigo if you can at all help it

This costs as much as a full blown PC.

Except you'll also need a killer desktop PC that can run it [1]:

    - NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
    - Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
    - 8GB+ RAM
    - Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
    - 2x USB 3.0 ports
    - Windows 7 SP1 or newer

The Oculus Touch is stated to need 4 USB ports [2], not just two, so better plan for that as well

So in total you are probably looking at close to $2,000 [3] to use the Rift not including whatever games or applications cost - of which there are not yet a lot of titles (I'm sure that will change in short order though).

[1]http://www.pcgamer.com/oculus-rift-pc-requirements-revealed/

[2]http://www.techtimes.com/articles/118068/20151219/excited-fo...

[3]https://www.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/

My (older) home PC pretty much hits the minimum (GTX 970 and the 4590 processor, but 16GB RAM). Honestly I couldn't tell you how many USB ports it has, I only use two.

Looks like I'll be holding off consideration until I upgrade :)

I think you're in a minority, even among PC builders.

Kind of like saying to buy a car you need a $300k house with a garage, when in fact many of the people buying a car already have a house with a garage.

That's also not a "killer" desktop. The 290 is a a 2.5 year old card. The GTX 970 is equivalent to a 680 or 780. The 680 came out almost four years ago. If you had no computer at all, you could build that system for ~$700 - $750 ($200 CPU, $100 Mobo, $200 Used GPU, $50 RAM, $75 SSD, $100 Tower+PSU).

But that's immaterial, as most early buyers of the Rift have hardware that meets the requirements above. And four USB ports? A $10-$20 powered USB hub solves that. Wouldn't surprise me if it came with one.

It's "killer" compared to 99% of all personal computers.

~$700 - $750

For casual gamers and the general public it's a non-starter.

Ok, you say, well it's not for them yet. Actually that's the whole point. In every article and everything that people are talking about in and around VR the whole discussion is how it transforms everything. You think Netflix is on-board so they can cater to PC Master Race people?

I'm bullish on VR (moreso AR actually) but lets not pretend that the next few years will see your average consumer using VR like this. More likely, they will be using something like the GearVR, which I think has a much brighter future.

Only if you include office computers and laptops that are not designed to play games. In gaming terms it's a low end system.

The AMD 290 is a sub 200$ graphics card and an i5-4590 is a 200$ CPU. More importantly this is a 600$ display, and it's not aimed at poor people.

If a hub solved the problem, they probably would have integrated it into their hardware. I suspect that it won't play nice with many hubs.

FWIW DK2 works fine with a hub.

The "n USB ports" is truly weird, considering that separate ports more often than not share controllers, so the bandwidth would be shared anyways (correct me if i'm wrong).

Maybe the number of ports is for power, obviating the need to bundle a region-specific mains adapter? In that case, a powered USB hub would be fine, a passive one wouldn't.

Actually, as an addendum to my other comment, I think a more accurate metaphor would be like buying a Tesla S.

You have to have a house that you can add a charging station to, in order to buy it, which most people don't have.

Most of the addressable market willing to pay $80k for a car do already own a house...

Of course. But again, it's still not everyone. For example I own a house but not a garage, so I can't get one.

Sure, and I do think the Tesla analogy is accurate. This is a first-gen device aimed towards early adopters who are willing to pay more. Next generations will be progressively cheaper.

There are quite a few Tesla owners who don't own houses, actually. It's definitely more convenient to have charging in your garage / your apartment's garage. So it's a big consideration, but not an absolute rule.

Web site says USD 59900 on Firefox mobile.

Edit: and on Chrome mobile

I was in for a $350 price poiny, but $600 is pushing it, given I'd need to buy a new PSU and GPU to use it.

UK cost is £530 including shipping and VAT (I presume).

Yeah it is.

I was going to preorder one but that's £100-£150 too much for me to justify spending on it for now to be honest.

Perhaps after the first reviews and supported games start to arrive I'll reconsider.

Plus $400 for the recommended graphics card :/

I actually tried ordering but their website is not really working right now. Both credit cards and paypal seem not to work.

I thought I had heard in the $200-$300 range expected for the final product. I'd jump at the lower end of that range, but there's no way I'm paying $600.

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