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Comment by strictnein | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

FWIW DK2 works fine with a hub.

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