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Oculus Rift will cost more than $350

By Matthew Handrahan

Oculus Rift will cost more than $350

Fri 02 Oct 2015 7:57am GMT / 3:57am EDT / 12:57am PDT
HardwareVirtual Reality

"We're roughly in that ballpark... but it's going to cost more than that," says Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey

Oculus VR

Oculus VR's Rift headset will cost more than $350, according to founder Palmer Luckey, putting the price-point at the very top or even above the company's initial estimate.

Speaking to Road To VR at the Oculus Connect conference, Luckey responded to a query about whether the Rift's price would be in line with its $350 developer kits.

"You know, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. We're roughly in that ballpark... but it's going to cost more than that," he said.

Oculus hasn't optimised around achieving the lowest possible price, Luckey explained, instead making, "no compromises...in terms of quality." The Rift's main components - lenses, displays, tracking - are all custom designed, and the company decided to sacrifice cost savings that would mean even a 10 per cent reduction in quality of experience.

"I can't tell you that it's going to be $350, and I would say I think people are going to be happy with what they get for the price because I really do think it's going to be that best VR headset you can buy."

Valve may well contest that point. Between the Rift, PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift, HTC and Valve's headset is the only one that has tracked hand controllers included in the basic package, principally because they make the VR experience, "exponentially better." Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Valve's Chet Faliszek explained that the company views their mandatory inclusion as "important" for creating the best user experience.

That won't be the case with the Oculus Rift, which isn't even shipping its Touch controllers until the quarter after the RIft launches. PlayStation VR will be the same, though Sony can at least rely on some customers already having Move controllers.

So, the VR experience that Oculus is most excited about - the one only accessible with Touch controllers - will cost even more than the RIft's $350-plus price-tag. It should also be noted that this is at the very top end of the $200 to $400 range that Oculus estimated when it finalised specs for the consumer version.

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12 Comments

Paul Johnson Managing Director / Lead code monkey, Rubicon Development

1,219 2,667 2.2
I'm betting it won't. At least not after a short while...

Posted:10 months ago

#1

Morville O'Driscoll Blogger & Critic

2,008 2,337 1.2
Do we have a rough-cost on the HTC Vive, yet?

Posted:10 months ago

#2

Dan Wood Visual Effects Artist

91 201 2.2
Alas, it wouldn't be a bad price, except that in the UK $350-400 will likely translate directly to £350-400.

Even then, when Asus and Acer are charging £600 for a G-Sync TN-panel gaming monitor, and pushing towards £1000 for IPS variants, while their typical shoddy build quality and cheap-out niggling issues still persist... getting a highly refined, hugely innovative piece of gaming equipment like this for less than £400 is still fantastic.

I'm just torn whether to go Oculus, Vive, or just go full impulse-buy and grab both so I can compare for myself :-)
The future is almost here! (For select genres and types of experience) Very much looking forward to seeing how it unfolds.

Posted:10 months ago

#3

Jordan Lund Columnist

114 249 2.2
That's just for the device itself, not counting the CPU/GPU/RAM upgrades necessary for many machines required to run it.

Somehow I doubt I'll be able to hook up an Oculus Rift to my Surface Pro and go.

Posted:10 months ago

#4

Joel Hruska Analyst/Journalist

42 164 3.9
You won't be. VR absolutely depends on smooth frame rate delivery. Only boutique laptops are going to have enough firepower to run it.

Posted:10 months ago

#5

James Berg Games User Researcher, EA Canada

314 426 1.4
I thought the connectors for laptops weren't the proper kind, and it was going to be almost impossible to run it on a laptop? I don't recall the details, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Posted:10 months ago

#6

Craig Page El Presidente, Awesome Enterprises

501 341 0.7
James I think it will connect to a laptop if you've got a USB and an HDMI port. It just won't run very well unless your laptop is a gaming laptop that come out a few months ago...

Posted:10 months ago

#7

Todd Weidner Founder, Big Daddy Game Studio

511 1,279 2.5
it looks to be a very uneven launch of VR. With low priced mobile units, then Sony VR, followed by the heavy hitters and higher cost PC versions from Oculus and Valve. Its going to be interesting, and it will all ride on user experience, and of course that one or two have to have VR games.

I think in 5 years from now VR will have a well established adoption, but how we get there and who gets the dominate market share will be interesting to watch.

If Sony can optimize and package No Mans Sky with their VR, that might be the first real winner in VR, I guess we will see.

I just hope I dont waste money on the beta max version of VR. :)

Posted:10 months ago

#8

Dan Wood Visual Effects Artist

91 201 2.2
@James
I believe it has something to do with typical laptop GPUs not outputting directly, or having direct control over, the HDMI port, as it's often shared by the onboard Intel graphics.
The recently announced full-fat desktop GTX 980 mobile variant is specifically stated to be Oculus Ready. I get the feeling I've read somewhere that 900-series GPUs in general weren't affected by the HDMI limitation, but I'm far from certain.
It's pretty much guaranteed that any older Optimus-style dual graphics laptops won't play ball though.

Posted:10 months ago

#9

Paul Jace Merchandiser

1,177 1,963 1.7
I won't be getting one but I'm curious to see how well they sell at whatever initial price point they come out at.

Posted:10 months ago

#10

Klaus Preisinger Freelance Writing

1,473 1,851 1.3
Considering the substantial hardware hunger of high definition VR games, all VR glasses are enthusiast equipment for owners of other enthusiast devices; at least for the moment. Compared to a new 4K gaming monitor, or new high power graphics card, 400€ VR glasses aren't that overpriced for what they deliver.

From owning a Asus 4k TN panel (PB287Q) and an Asus AH-IPS secondary screen, I can tell you that the difference in terms of color intensity is negligible. Pixel density compensates for a lot. Ttake good magnifying glasses and look at a Full-HD TN panel and a full HD IPS panel. You will quickly understand why IPS looks better and why it had never anything to do with better angles. IPS simply has more surface coverage than TN, an effect which 4k TN replicates by stacking pixels more densely.

The one thing you do learn with 4k is just how much a high refresh rate matters. 30Hz is unbearable, 60 is ok. This is where most Laptops and mid range PCs will fall flat on their face. I doubt anything but HDM 2.0 or DisplayPort will deliver Oculus with the resolution AND the refresh rate to make it look good.. The OR is not a Laptop upgrade as far as I am concerned.

Posted:10 months ago

#11

Richard Browne Partner & Head of Interactive, Many Rivers Productions

212 303 1.4
The Oculus 0.7 SDK basically made running on a laptop impossible. I have it working perfectly up to 0.6 but no longer, I've had to switch over to my desktop ; shame, it makes doing demos a nightmare. I doubt we'll see any laptop support returning anytime soon.

Posted:10 months ago

#12

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