Oculus Rift Total Package Price: Around $1,500

recode.net

5 points·ozten··2 comments

$1,500, seriously? That's an expensive indoctrination to VR.

I am excited about Oculus and I am excited about VR as a whole, but I fail to see how they are going to reach the general average consumer who isn't a hardcore gamer or someone who buys the top of the line graphics cards when building a new machine.

The playing field is looking like this:

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Oculus: Hardcore PC gamers, niches like 3D mapping, education and science

Sony Project Morpheus: Obviously only for PS4, but only needing to buy the headset should keep the price down

Microsoft HoloLens: Unknown at this stage, but presumably for PC. Microsoft are probably working on a headset for the Xbox One.

Steam VR: This could be a dark horse, probably requires similar specs to Oculus (unless they can pair with an external device to mitigate), they could win on price point and middle tier consumer.

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They are backing themselves into a dark corner. I have always thought the best approach Oculus could take is offering two different packages. Bundle the headset with a paired graphics card and offer it at an affordable price, or those who already have powerful enough cards can just buy the headset at an affordable price. Bundling is the kind of strategy they should be taking, perhaps partnering with AMD or Nvidia. The headset doesn't even have any solid content for it yet.

In other words, you'll need a PC that's good enough to play current gen games on. No surprises here. I wouldn't say this is Oculus backing themselves into a corner so much as an observation on the current state of VR. As with current gen games, the price of the machine is largely related to the content you are viewing, not the device you are viewing it through.

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