Palmer Luckey Explains Why Oculus Rift Will Cost Over $350

Megalith

Megalith

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It sounds like the Oculus will cost at least $400. Will you be willing to pay that to experience VR?

In the humble beginnings of Oculus, the company sought to create an affordable consumer VR headset that would fall around the $300/$350 price point of the Rift DK1 and DK2 development kits. Much has changed since then and in recent years the company has shied away from specific price claims, but Oculus founder Palmer Luckey closed the gap on one end of the spectrum regarding the price of the Oculus Rift.
 
All I can say is "good luck with that". I'm not spending more than what a console costs on some goofy headgear.
 
Hopefully the Vive will be able to come in at a lower price tag.
 
I think it all depends on how good it is. Honestly, if you're willing to pay 350 for a headset, then is 50 bucks really that big of a deal? Personally, I wouldn't be an early adopter of this, unless reviews were amazing and I saw a demo that blew my mind.
 
Is anyone really that surprised? I'm just wondering what kind of graphics card I will need to use it.
 
nilepez said:
I think it all depends on how good it is. Honestly, if you're willing to pay 350 for a headset, then is 50 bucks really that big of a deal? Personally, I wouldn't be an early adopter of this, unless reviews were amazing and I saw a demo that blew my mind.
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get a demo of Elite or Project Cars IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND
 
If the experience is as good as I think it will be, I will pay. It's going to provide an experience that NOTHING else can. I'm not referring to Oculus specifically, but the concept of the device.

People on here spend $300+ on a 2D monitor no problem. I spent $800 on mine. I expect the Oculus will provide a far better experience.
 
westrock2000 said:
If the experience is as good as I think it will be, I will pay. It's going to provide an experience that NOTHING else can. I'm not referring to Oculus specifically, but the concept of the device.

People on here spend $300+ on a 2D monitor no problem. I spent $800 on mine. I expect the Oculus will provide a far better experience.
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Good point. If it's comfortable (a big concern for me), it'd mean I could have a top notch monitor for photography and desktop stuff and just wear this for games. even for non VR, it might be a nice way to have a big screen TV in a small space.

Now I'm a little more interested.
 
Just about the price point I expected.

$400 ain't gonna break the bank.

I've spend more money on a videocard.

You gotta pay to play!
 
Well, my monitor was over $1K. My graphics cards cost me $1300. If they do VR right (which by all accounts they seem to be doing) then $400-$500 seems reasonable to me and I'll pick up an Oculus Rift when it comes out next year.

These aren't going to be purchased by the average consumer or casual gamer. Most of their market is going to be the hardcore gamer/PC enthusiast who is willing to put down some coin for cutting edge tech.

Give it a couple of years and volume and tech advances will bring the cost down to the ~$200 range.
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
Well, my monitor was over $1K. My graphics cards cost me $1300. If they do VR right (which by all accounts they seem to be doing) then $400-$500 seems reasonable to me and I'll pick up an Oculus Rift when it comes out next year.
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I thought they were coming out in December. Guess they didn't want to deal with Xmas demand for gen 1.
 
They make it sound so sophisticated and yet it's just a smart phone LCD glued to a pair of Goggles and has accelerometers. That's not worth $400. Queue China to make cheap knocks in 3.. 2..
 
Ashbringer said:
They make it sound so sophisticated and yet it's just a smart phone LCD glued to a pair of Goggles and has accelerometers. That's not worth $400. Queue China to make cheap knocks in 3.. 2..
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it's more than that, first off its not a regular smartphone lcd as most of those have crappy refresh rates, they also have to use high end controllers in order to reduce latency and prevent people from getting motion sickness. You are basically saying Google cardboard and the oculus rift are the same thing. Try both then come back to me with your thoughts.
 
Don't know why most of you are comparing the price your peripherals/equipment to justify this price. Bad way to look at it.

It should be look at is it worth it in terms of how you will be using it? Yes we spend $500+ on video cards and monitors but we all know we use those things day to day hours on end with no problem. A VR headset at $500 will you be using it to play your games or most of your games to justify this price tag? At most I see it as playing 5-6 games of the 200+ games I own. It might be a bit more for you guys but I don't think you my comparison is far off from you + how long would you want to wear this for before getting nausea or just getting tired of wearing it.

It's a niche product which will cater to certain games/applications and for me as Im sure it will in no way be a monitor replacement I will not pay over $300 for it.
 
I'm actually surprise it isn't higher. As others have mentioned, there are gaming monitors that cost in that range or more. And when you consider the fact that the tech is still new, I think it's a reasonable price. These tech are not expected to be accessible to everyone from the get go.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
Just about the price point I expected.
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I don't see the problem with pricing either. If $350-$400 pricing is true, it delivered on the promise of bringing down the price of a high quality VR experience.

It's still a niche product and I don't plan on buying one, but it seems to be a decent device.
 
Finally I can use this :cool:


Q3UGpML.jpg
 
TBF i didn't expect it to be cheap. Just waiting to see how it translates into UK £
 
As long as I can wear it without it interfering with my $500 headphones (and it gets good reviews), I'm in. I spent significantly more than $400 on my last monitor.

Does MS have any plans to release a Hololens to the public?
 
Think I read they recommended an Nvidia 970 or higher for the Rift. Is the AMD 390 comparable to the 970? Close to the same price range.

I still have a 560ti. I'm probably going to upgrade in the next few months
I've used DK1 and DK2 versions of the Rift. Besides making me dizzy, the experience is wicked cool. I'm going to have a hard time resisting.
 
steakman1971 said:
Think I read they recommended an Nvidia 970 or higher for the Rift. Is the AMD 390 comparable to the 970? Close to the same price range.

I still have a 560ti. I'm probably going to upgrade in the next few months
I've used DK1 and DK2 versions of the Rift. Besides making me dizzy, the experience is wicked cool. I'm going to have a hard time resisting.
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Anything you've read should be taken with a grain of salt, because although the screen spec for both Oculus and Valve are tentatively stating 2160x1200 @ 90Hz, there's always a chance the final consumer version gets a slightly better screen which would require even more GPU power. And one company may just try waiting out the other and then topping them with a slightly better screen once the first company commits.

Either way, they'll need powerful cards, and another consideration is that Pascal may already be out around the time Oculus ships, and/or Valve is shipping larger volumes ((Valve has revisted their original target of "November" as just being a low volume release for early adopters, with production ramping up in Q1-16).
 
ZodaEX said:
There is no demo of Project Cars.................................
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What he meant was get someone with a DK2 let you experience Project Cars with it. It is pretty jaw dropping.

I was kinda on the fence about this tech until actually borrowing my friend's DK1, and then later a DK2. Immediately I was like "okay I need this, I don't care what it costs".

Until you experience it, you don't really understand it just from reading about it. It's also one of the things that make the typical "LOL this is just gunna fizzel just like 3DTV" commenters in VR threads so adorable - they haven't tried one, they have no frame of reference.
 
If it actually works and has decent resolution why not ... most of us wouldn't blink to drop several hundred to thousands for one or more monitors ... if they can maintain it in the 300-400 range that is equivalent to a mid range monitor ... graphical devices are generally about performance as much as price and anything in the $500 or under is the sweet spot for graphical devices
 
Didn't Luckey go on in interviews that the Facebook acquisition would allow them to make the Rift cheaper?
 
Yeah absolutely, I've been wanting to get completely lost inside a game the way the Rift can let you for a long time noow.
 
I don't see the price as something that matters. I always thought $350 or less as extremely optimistic. The reality it's this is a very niche device. It isn't going to have a huge splash in gaming. It is going to be a very high end peripheral for a select few games and those who are really super into it. It is mainly going to be a huge deal in medical, aerospace, cad and other industry where 3d space is a big deal. For those it could be $1000 and it would still be a great value. So yes, it's price is rather irrelevant.
 
shatterstar said:
Don't know why most of you are comparing the price your peripherals/equipment to justify this price. Bad way to look at it.

It should be look at is it worth it in terms of how you will be using it? Yes we spend $500+ on video cards and monitors but we all know we use those things day to day hours on end with no problem. A VR headset at $500 will you be using it to play your games or most of your games to justify this price tag? At most I see it as playing 5-6 games of the 200+ games I own. It might be a bit more for you guys but I don't think you my comparison is far off from you + how long would you want to wear this for before getting nausea or just getting tired of wearing it.

It's a niche product which will cater to certain games/applications and for me as Im sure it will in no way be a monitor replacement I will not pay over $300 for it.
Click to expand...

I get the skepticism, I bought a DK2 and while its 'cool' the novelty wore off pretty quick for me....only because of the DK2's limitations. I tried out one of the racing games....can't remember the name but it was like iRacing... Anyways, the deal breaker for me is that I couldn't focus on distant objects on the track without ending up looking at the pixels and being distracted. The CV1 is going to have a much higher screen resolution and should eliminate that problem.

Lately, with the software ecosystem having matured, one app in particular has brought me back into using it. Virtual Desktop does just as you'd expect, virtualizes your desktop. It drapes one of a few different backdrops around you and gives you the ability to make your desktop wallpaper transparent so your icons appear to "float" in this space. They also developed it to be able to wrap the desktop around you or leave it flat and adjust its size to make it so large you gotta turn your head to see everything or tiny as shit, lol. Additionally, Virtual Desktop lets me watch video and I even played Battlefield 4 through it. I've sat pretty comfortably and watched a couple baseball games with the movie theater setting and after awhile if I look around and am sitting in my chair just right, the physical backing of my chair matches up with the back of my virtual chair. Additionally, the theater room backdrop is much larger than my actual room and I genuinely FEEL like I'm in a larger place than I really am. With moving imagery that doesn't require you to focus on a single point, the low resolution really melts away and makes watching a ballgame or Netflix an enjoyable experience. If I had a better computer chair, I'd probably prefer it over sitting on the couch in the living room.
 
The $350 price was the only thing that was going to make me wait longer for their product to come out than Vive's. Since the specs are pretty much identical I think it's safe to assume they are going to be priced pretty close to each other.

Now it's just going to come down to who can get to retail first for me.
 
I know they had to add dioppers to the kit for people with high index glasses so they can use it without their glasses on. My guess is they bought the tech or licensed it from Nikon who was developing it for the other direction in their attempt at VR kit they demo'd at same Siggraph as the oculous rift in 2013. I've used the diopper version of DK2 and my prescitption is 6.5 which means 20 feet looks like 650 feet and most of the VR kits before the dioppers simply wear not wearable for more than a few minutes with glasses on.
 
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