No there is a firmware hack called emokit which allows data with the $300 headset (correction its $400 now LMAO). However, emotiv is by far the single worst company I ever dealt with. Worst product support experience of my life. Having bought one of those epoc headsets I have to say its the very definition of flimsy, a half baked buggy product with planned obsolescence and proprietary restriction built in on every level of design. Emotiv even censored their forum and deleted my username to hide how they totally fucked me over. I support the openbci guys they have done a great thing by making a open source EEG sensor kit but well they are being rather greedy in the marketing. A terrible idea because right now they need to build a developer community around the device. They should be giving these kits away.
If you plan to use Emokit, please drop me a line (email's in my profile) if you have any issues. I'm no longer the maintainer, but I like to keep abreast of its usage, and want to make sure that it continues working for new devices. (For context, I'm the original reverse-engineer behind Emokit.)