Oculus Touch price drop feels like I have been scammed...

A

ameer214

Weaksauce
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I don't normally like to make a big deal out of things, but I am truly concerned about what happened with the Oculus touch price. How can a company just drop the price on a product by 50% three months after release? I pre-ordered my touch and got it mid December. Within a few months, they dropped the price by 50% without any compensation to those that had to pay the full price just a few months ago*. I don't really see anyone making a big deal about it and I can't understand why. Why is this o.k? If you had to drop the price on a product by 50% three months after launch, you clearly didn't price it right to began with.

I am not looking for anyone to feel sorry for me, just looking for thoughts from people I can relate to.

Thanks,
Amer

*I am aware of the $50 credit that some were offered because they purchased it within the last 30 days. Those people could have actually saved $100 by just returning there product and reburying (Sad...).
 
If you are that upset about abrupt price changes in this brand new market, maybe you should have sat on the sidelines until gen 2.

I hope you never buy a car or even a higher end TV because those things can drop by thousands of dollars overnight.
 
ameer214 said:
I don't normally like to make a big deal out of things, but I am truly concerned about what happened with the Oculus touch price. How can a company just drop the price on a product by 50% three months after release? I pre-ordered my touch and got it mid December. Within a few months, they dropped the price by 50% without any compensation to those that had to pay the full price just a few months ago*. I don't really see anyone making a big deal about it and I can't understand why. Why is this o.k? If you had to drop the price on a product by 50% three months after launch, you clearly didn't price it right to began with.

I am not looking for anyone to feel sorry for me, just looking for thoughts from people I can relate to.

Thanks,
Amer

*I am aware of the $50 credit that some were offered because they purchased it within the last 30 days. Those people could have actually saved $100 by just returning there product and reburying (Sad...).
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You got 3 months of use out of the product that you wouldn't have had if you waited, so to be fair you'd have to compensate Oculus for having the hardware for 3 months before anyone else. Probably worth oh lets say around $100 to have it early...

If this truly concerns you, you have a charmed life (that or you worry about everything, no matter how inconsequential, and have a miserable one).
 
Oculus Touch in Sweden cost €312 ($340) if bought from the retailers.
But if you buy it straight from Oculus which is based in Netherlands I think, it's only €120 ($130)
 
Don't you just hate that ? The product you buy decides to go on sale or have a price drop shortly after you paid more for it ? But that's the nature of a capitalistic consumer system and as others have mentioned cars and TVs are pretty bad about doing that very thing, some computer parts too. Know what I hate even worse though ? Paying top money for a product only to have it arrive and not work. At least you didn't have that happen to you.
 
They did drop the price of the Touch fairly quickly after release - my guess is that it wasn't selling as well as they had hoped.

I'd probably be fairly pissed if I bought it as well, but in technology this tends to happen more often than not these days.
 
Probably not as upset as people that were told the headsets were gonna be targeted around the $300 mark. Kickstarter happens for that much, was succesful. Kickstarter backers ended up getting full retail helmet for free in addition. Then they launch them at almost triple the price they kept saying, I wouldn't of held off on the kickstarter if I knew how it would go down.

How does that relate? Well tech world isn't exactly fair, just like real one. Some people somewhere had expectations and come up with a price, high or low, see it's not really feasible and remain tight lipped until day of change pretty much. VR isn't alone in this, lots of different tech stuff has had ssimilar issues in the last couple decades. Welcome to 1st world life.
 
Greatly appreciate all the honest opinions. I can't disagree with any of them. I totally agree that technology changes quickly and prices drop. However, I am highly concerned because they dropped the price of a new product by 50% within three months of launch.

Does anyone have any examples of a price drop of 50% within three months of launch (similar type of product)? This seems unprecedented.
 
Here's a blast from the past, Iphone users upset over a $200 price drop after 2 months (33%, but item cost is way higher so similar enough). http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/09/05/iphone.price.drop.redux/

VR is going to be like phones, every 2-3 years there will be a big upgrade from the major companies. Then smaller companies will be entering the market every year, same stuff will hapen to prices that happened to smartphones a decade ago.

I think they just realized since VR is in it's infancy, it's not worth the gamble of keeping the price high and it's better to alienate a small audience that is miffed from the sudden price drop compared to amount of new people it could bring in by being lower cost to entry. It's a fledgling industry that isn't quite sure what products will work at what price yet.
 
Good data point Samson4EiT. Uproar over iphone..where is the uproar over Oculus Touch!? lol.

The percentage drop is what concerns me. They clearly miss calculated the market demand (Again..). It would be interesting to know how retailers were handled with this price drop. If they purchased 10 sets at an expected retail price of $200 and only sold 5 within the first few months. Were they out of luck too? It would seem to be the case in Sweden since they are selling them at original retail price(per Nebeil, above).

By dropping the price by such an unprecedented amount so quickly they significantly devalued the product.
 
Hah, I never thought I'd see this topic come up again nearly two months later!

Yeah, I feel similarly burned for pre-ordering (which means I didn't get the $50 credit, but got The Unspoken and VR Sports Challenge as bonuses, both of which probably don't add up to $100), but hey, can't predict the future. I just wanted in on those motion controllers I'd been waiting since release for, knowing how nice they looked and how the analog sticks had to be a welcome improvement over trackpads for movement.

There was just one other thing I didn't see coming that really made that feel like salt in the wound, which I'll elaborate on in response to an earlier post:

bobzdar said:
You got 3 months of use out of the product that you wouldn't have had if you waited, so to be fair you'd have to compensate Oculus for having the hardware for 3 months before anyone else. Probably worth oh lets say around $100 to have it early...
If this truly concerns you, you have a charmed life (that or you worry about everything, no matter how inconsequential, and have a miserable one).
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3 months of use with tracking glitches that didn't get sorted out until the very day before the price drop? This wasn't 3 months of tracked-hands fun like the Vive users were enjoying all along, this was 3 months of "why are my hands jumping all over the place, ruining my Quill strokes and throwing off my aim in Onward?" In other words, 3 months of frustration, not fun that people paid the extra $100 for.

Don't get me started on Oculus' promised "January update" that released in February, and ended up being the dreaded 1.11 patch that only served to make everything WORSE for a lot of people, myself included. I actually shelved my Rift for the most part just because of how bad it was, and other people outright jumped ship to the Vive just so they would have a tracking system that worked.

1.12 fixed just about all of that, but didn't release until a day or two before the sudden price drop on March 1st. You can understand why so many were upset about that. But, hey, at least they fixed the tracking just in time for Robo Recall's release, and that game alone made all the Touch teething troubles worth it!
 
Was I the only one who saw the writing on the wall about Oculus sucking?

Valve and HTC beat the Rift to market, they were cheaper, better supported and higher quality right out of the gate. Someone who bought the full VIVE kit on release STILL payed less than an Oculus pre-order customer who waited for a roomscale experience.

What is sad is that this is a market that Oculus FREAKING CREATED. They literally created the modern definition of VR, and valve objectively beat them in every metric. Earlier, cheaper, higher quality and better supported.
 
KazeoHin said:
Was I the only one who saw the writing on the wall about Oculus sucking?

Valve and HTC beat the Rift to market, they were cheaper, better supported and higher quality right out of the gate. Someone who bought the full VIVE kit on release STILL payed less than an Oculus pre-order customer who waited for a roomscale experience.

What is sad is that this is a market that Oculus FREAKING CREATED. They literally created the modern definition of VR, and valve objectively beat them in every metric. Earlier, cheaper, higher quality and better supported.
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What? Higher Quality, better supported? Sucking? The only thing that the Vive had over the Rift at launch was Room scale. The head sets were pretty much on par, most people who tried both said that the Rift was more comfortable but that the Vive was better for people with glasses. Once the Touch controllers came out and then when they released the 1.12 update, The Rift is arguably the better purchase at this point in time.
 
NamelessPFG said:
3 months of use with tracking glitches that didn't get sorted out until the very day before the price drop? This wasn't 3 months of tracked-hands fun like the Vive users were enjoying all along, this was 3 months of "why are my hands jumping all over the place, ruining my Quill strokes and throwing off my aim in Onward?" In other words, 3 months of frustration, not fun that people paid the extra $100 for.

Don't get me started on Oculus' promised "January update" that released in February, and ended up being the dreaded 1.11 patch that only served to make everything WORSE for a lot of people, myself included. I actually shelved my Rift for the most part just because of how bad it was, and other people outright jumped ship to the Vive just so they would have a tracking system that worked.
!
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Well, to be fair, Oculus never promised Room scale when the Touch controllers launched. It was experimental. Two sensors worked fine without any glitches.

1.11 was a disaster though. They were silly to release it to everyone without testing it on a small number of people first. They learned their lesson though. With the 1.12 update they released it in batches and they have been doing the same since.

I think most of the people that jumped ship jumped before the Touch controllers were released.
 
KazeoHin said:
Was I the only one who saw the writing on the wall about Oculus sucking?

Valve and HTC beat the Rift to market, they were cheaper, better supported and higher quality right out of the gate. Someone who bought the full VIVE kit on release STILL payed less than an Oculus pre-order customer who waited for a roomscale experience.

What is sad is that this is a market that Oculus FREAKING CREATED. They literally created the modern definition of VR, and valve objectively beat them in every metric. Earlier, cheaper, higher quality and better supported.
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Huh? Rift was $600 at launch + $200 later for Touch. Now Rift + Touch is $600. Vive has been $800 the whole time. At no point was vive cheaper than rift, except for a couple one day sales.

Both systems have had a lot of software issues, especially early on. Valve continues to regularly break things in SteamVR.

Oculus also has a ton of exclusive games, many of which are free to rift/touch owners. Also pretty much everyone says that rift is a higher quality product physically (lighter, more comfortable, built in audio).

No idea wtf you are talking about.
 
I have not tried the Vive, but have heard from reviews that Oculus is a more refined product. Those same people also said that the Vive was more fun (this was before touch was released). I am impressed with these first gen VR products. However, there is this voice in my head that keeps telling me that I have been had. I can't convence myself that this 50% price drop is not out of the ordinary for new tech. I think it hasn't happened before within such a short time frame. I challenge anyone that disagrees to provide a valid example.
 
KazeoHin said:
Was I the only one who saw the writing on the wall about Oculus sucking?

Valve and HTC beat the Rift to market, they were cheaper, better supported and higher quality right out of the gate. Someone who bought the full VIVE kit on release STILL payed less than an Oculus pre-order customer who waited for a roomscale experience.

What is sad is that this is a market that Oculus FREAKING CREATED. They literally created the modern definition of VR, and valve objectively beat them in every metric. Earlier, cheaper, higher quality and better supported.
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Cheaper? Nope
Higher quality? Nope
Better supported? Nope

Hmm, that just leaves earlier.

And I own/use both. I slightly prefer the Rift as it is easier to take on/off, has built-in sound, a larger sweet spot visually, is lighter and the Touch controllers are definitely superior to the Vive wands. That said, I also enjoy using the Vive. All in all, they are both very capable and get the job done in delivering a quality VR experience.

You're entitled to your own opinion of course, but according to mine, yours sucks here in that it is based on a number of false presumptions.
 
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Supercharged_Z06 said:
Cheaper? Nope
Higher quality? Nope
Better supported? Nope

Hmm, that just leaves earlier.

And I own/use both. I slightly prefer the Rift as it is easier to take on/off, has built-in sound, a larger sweet spot visually, is lighter and the Touch controllers are definitely superior to the Vive wands. That said, I also enjoy using the Vive. All in all, they are both very capable and get the job done in delivering a quality VR experience.

You're entitled to your own opinion of course, but according to mine, yours sucks here in that it is based on a number of false presumptions.
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I agree. I have not used the Vive but from reading about it online, it's kind of a wash between the 2. I bet I would of loved the Vive just as much.

I love the Rifts headhpones and controllers. The headphones have awesome sound and the controllers are good for an old fart like me.
 
I have yet to try a Vive personally, though I'll go for it if I see the opportunity.

However, I'll fully admit that I went with the Rift for two reasons:

-Early on, when both HMDs were new to market, the Elite: Dangerous and DCS World playerbases both heavily favored the Rift for comfort, clarity, and Asynchronous Timewarp superiority for handling the inevitable frame drops. Word is that the gap's closed since then, but the Vive still suffers in cockpit sims due to greater SDE (a consequence of higher FOV at roughly the same resolution) and a smaller "sweet spot" in its lenses.
-The Touch controllers looked like a superior design, even if they sure took their sweet time getting to market. I preferred the use of analog sticks and the extra action button, and the grip trigger under the middle finger looked much more ergonomic. All the requests for Revive to implement grip toggle rather than emulating the hold behavior that Touch games default to have only confirmed that.

The gap's closing, though. Nothing's stopping a hardware manufacturer from taking a more Oculus Touch-esque controller design, analog stick and all, and slapping a Vive Tracker on it. HTC's already got that deluxe audio strap, although it costs a whopping $99 extra for something that should've been included by default. Asynchronous Reprojection should close the gap for handling framedrops smoothly, no "cut it all the way down to 45 FPS when you're only rendering 80-89 FPS" dumbness.

And all that's just the Vive; let's not forget that LG has their own SteamVR headset in the works, that PiMAX 4K thing showed up way the heck outta nowhere (though it's really taking a 1440p video signal and upscaling that to 4K, which I find to be a nasty case of misleading marketing), and we're about to be drowning in Windows Mixed Reality HMDs later in the year. If this keeps up, this is going to be a much more interesting market than last year! Neither Oculus nor HTC can remain complacent with all this competition showing up.
 
No kidding, Oculus headphones are some the best sounding and design. Now... back to the topic...I think Oculus has opened the gates for companies to hype up there product and sell the product for double the price for the first few months. It isn't any different than people selling things above retail on eBay. It is one thing when people do it, but now we have a company doing something similar systematically.
 
Ameer, I had the same feeling you had when they dropped the price of the touch and sensor. Lesson learned folks. No more preordering and no more buying within 6 months of release. They could've saved themselves the animosity if they'd just given us credit in the Oculus store equal to the amount of the pricedrop. Very hard to gauge now what the products are worth if they screw around with the prices like this. The $100 drop on the Rift I can deal with but the touch and sensor was a kick in the shins.
 
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I don't get this attitude at all. If you want something so badly that you are pre-ordering it, then you pay the price and live with the consequences. You are acting like this is something new but it happens all the time, especially in the Tech world. Phones and GPUs are especially bad for it. You buy something this month, the next month it could be on sale for half price. Or you pre-order a phone at a high price then within a couple of months you can it get much cheaper. There is even a phrase for it in the GPU world, called Early adopter tax.

It's quite simple, you look at a product that you want and you check if you can afford it. If you are happy with the price you buy it. If it bothers you so much that something is going to drop in price down the line, then don't buy anything until it's price is reduced.

As for me, I bought the touch controllers and am delighted I bought them on released and was happy with price. I don't mind the price drop at all as I think its great that the price for VR is coming down.
 
reaper12 said:
I don't get this attitude at all. If you want something so badly that you are pre-ordering it, then you pay the price and live with the consequences. You are acting like this is something new but it happens all the time, especially in the Tech world. Phones and GPUs are especially bad for it. You buy something this month, the next month it could be on sale for half price. Or you pre-order a phone at a high price then within a couple of months you can it get much cheaper. There is even a phrase for it in the GPU world, called Early adopter tax.

It's quite simple, you look at a product that you want and you check if you can afford it. If you are happy with the price you buy it. If it bothers you so much that something is going to drop in price down the line, then don't buy anything until it's price is reduced.

As for me, I bought the touch controllers and am delighted I bought them on released and was happy with price. I don't mind the price drop at all as I think its great that the price for VR is coming down.
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Good for you. Seriously. I'm happy with my gear but learned my lesson. GPU's have a much more predictable price curve though. I expected the Rift equipment to stay steady in price untill the next gen showed up. Just dropping the price after a few months surprised me. I now understand they did it to increase market penetration. In the end that's good for all of us. Next gen I'm not going to be penetrated early, you can take the honors.
 
reapart12 and Bigc208, you both make good points. I am personally not new to buying electronics. I learned to live with how quickly they lose value. However, I have never experienced a brand new product losing this much value this quickly at the hands of the OEM.

I was perfectly happy with the price myself and don't disagree that a price drop is a good thing for VR as a whole. I want VR to be adopted quickly so companies can invest more into it and make it better. If I truly wanted to cry about the price drop, I would have done it the first day they announced it.

With that said. I decided to bring up the issue here at Hardocp because I was looking to get some relevant examples of this being the norm. So far, other than general statements about electronics getting cheaper, I have not seen anything that applies.

If this is unprecedented AND we don't agree to it, I think we need to speak up or it will just become the norm. If everyone but me thinks that this being the norm is acceptable, than I will have no choice but to move on.

Look, I can't even convenience myself that they scammed me. That is why the title of the tread mentions "feels like". I guess some didn't sense my uncertainty.
 
Bigc208 said:
Good for you. Seriously. I'm happy with my gear but learned my lesson. GPU's have a much more predictable price curve though. I expected the Rift equipment to stay steady in price untill the next gen showed up. Just dropping the price after a few months surprised me. I now understand they did it to increase market penetration. In the end that's good for all of us. Next gen I'm not going to be penetrated early, you can take the honors.
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It's not a few months though, the Rift was released in March last year, pre-orders started in January 2016. Touch was released in December, but, they had to drop the price of that because they wanted to get more people buying the Rift and the touch together. You actually sound butt hurt or jealous or something, Why would it matter to you if the price stays steady until the next gen is released? My guess is that you were hoping to sell it for a price and can't do that now. Again, you weigh up the plus and minus's of any purchase and if you can't afford it, don't buy it. Don't come moaning 3 months later when it drops in price and say you were shafted. In the tech world you just don't know what is going to happen. You buy now if you want it now. There will always be something faster, cheaper, better along in a few months. Resale value is not guaranteed.

Maybe GPU's have a much more predictable price curve, but, the same thing still applies. Look at the people who bought the Titan X Maxwell for $999. Rumours had the 980 Ti coming out in September at the earliest, instead it came out in June just 3 months after the Titan x, for $350 less. People gave out about that. Or how about people who bought the 1080 in December or January this year, then Nvidia drops the price $100 in February. Or if you buy any of the higher end GPUs when they are first released, you usually end up paying way over the MSRP. IF you waited a couple of months you generally get the same GPU for less.
 
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ameer214 said:
reapart12 and Bigc208, you both make good points. I am personally not new to buying electronics. I learned to live with how quickly they lose value. However, I have never experienced a brand new product losing this much value this quickly at the hands of the OEM.

I was perfectly happy with the price myself and don't disagree that a price drop is a good thing for VR as a whole. I want VR to be adopted quickly so companies can invest more into it and make it better. If I truly wanted to cry about the price drop, I would have done it the first day they announced it.

With that said. I decided to bring up the issue here at Hardocp because I was looking to get some relevant examples of this being the norm. So far, other than general statements about electronics getting cheaper, I have not seen anything that applies.

If this is unprecedented AND we don't agree to it, I think we need to speak up or it will just become the norm. If everyone but me thinks that this being the norm is acceptable, than I will have no choice but to move on.

Look, I can't even convenience myself that they scammed me. That is why the title of the tread mentions "feels like". I guess some didn't sense my uncertainty.
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They didn't scam you or anyone else. If you are worried about price drops in the tech world then don't buy anything for at least a year after it's released. See some example in my last post.

You keep going on about the 50% price drop like it's the end of the world. It's really simple, they want people to buy the Rift and the Touch controllers as a bundle. So they are selling the Rift and Touch for the same price the Rift used to be. Can't remember where I read it but that was their aim with the price reduction. And my guess would be that they still think that a lot of people will buy the headset without the controllers. I am also guessing that because of that, it's probably makes more economic sense to have a larger price reduction on the Touch controllers than the headset.
 
Hard to understand how lowering your price could be a scam. If the price had gone up would you have felt better?
 
Happens all the freakin time. However you had the device for 3 MONTHS before the price dropped not 2 weeks. Imagine if I complained about my phone dropping in price 3 months after I got it...
 
ameer214 said:
Greatly appreciate all the honest opinions. I can't disagree with any of them. I totally agree that technology changes quickly and prices drop. However, I am highly concerned because they dropped the price of a new product by 50% within three months of launch.

Does anyone have any examples of a price drop of 50% within three months of launch (similar type of product)? This seems unprecedented.
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Think of all those people that were happy they paid full MSRP price for a Nintendo Classic Mini at launch. I'm sure they aren't making a fuss about what people are paying 3 months later. Not pointing at you :) Win some, loose some.
 
My roommate bought the Rift, and Touch on day one.

It's gotta sting a bit, but I don't really see a problem with the Rift price drop.

I thought the Touch dropping in half, something like a month after it came out was pretty dirty though.


After spending time with it, I feel like it still lacks the killer app.

I don't like the teleport movement but I understand the reasoning for it.


I'm on the fence still even at $400.
 
Pro tip: for any major or semi-major purchases use a Discover card, or any credit card that has price protection as a perk. 90 days is the usual limit.

Seriously though that's tech for you... same thing happens to new TVs, cars, and all sorts of stuff. Wanna play, gotta pay. For 399 I got the whole bundle and a ton of free games and I'm having an absolute blast.... I picked it up local deal from best buy and the next day I saw amazon was doing the same price + $100 gift card... (no free games though I don't think, and didn't include Eve:Valkalrie) It's so good I'm not even upset about losing out on the $100 amazon gift card.
 
skiddierow said:
I thought the Touch dropping in half, something like a month after it came out was pretty dirty though
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The price dropped happened in March, the Touch controllers were released in December. If you pre-ordered you got VR sports Challenge and Unspoken free. If you activated the touch controllers 30 days before the price drop they gave you $50 oculus store credit. I am not sure why people take price reductions in tech stuff so badly. It happens all the time in other areas, for example, I bought a pair of basketball shoes from Adidas in April for $175, in the sale they had in June I could have got the same shoes for $80.
 
reaper12 said:
The price dropped happened in March, the Touch controllers were released in December. If you pre-ordered you got VR sports Challenge and Unspoken free. If you activated the touch controllers 30 days before the price drop they gave you $50 oculus store credit. I am not sure why people take price reductions in tech stuff so badly. It happens all the time in other areas, for example, I bought a pair of basketball shoes from Adidas in April for $175, in the sale they had in June I could have got the same shoes for $80.
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Ahh didnt know about the credit.

Cutting price in half in 3 months, is still ridiculous.
 
I spent a total of $860 for the Rift HMD, Touch, and a third sensor, spread out over the course of mid June through Dec of 2016.

I mean, I'd love it if I was given $400 back. But I knew going into it that the price of bleeding edge tech fluctuates wildly and I accepted that risk. I'm just glad the Oculus/Valve/whoever didn't release a new "gen 2" HMD months or even a year after I bought into it, making everything I own obsolete.
 
Lol, the price of Rift is falling faster than cryptocurrancy.

I am just happy to support Zukerbergh in any way I can. He probably needs all the money he can get.
 
skiddierow said:
Ahh didnt know about the credit.

Cutting price in half in 3 months, is still ridiculous.
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Would you rather more people get into the VR game to increase adoption so we getting gear/games or sit at an artificially high price to stroke your fragile ego?
 
Well that sucks. But really it's the luck of the draw.

You make a choice....you should live by it and be happy you got it first... :)
- Let me put it this way. I'm yet to try VR so despite your experience, I'm still a bit envious of you!!
 
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