Oculus Rift priced at $599
Pre-orders for the consumer version of Oculus Rift began today, revealing the price.
Oculus Rift opened pre-orders today as promised, and as a result we finally know the price for the consumer model: $599.
The Oculus Shop showed the price, alongside an expected ship date of March 2016. It's said to be hitting select retailers in April. The set includes the Rift headset, Xbox One controller, wireless adapter, Oculus Remote, along with Lucky's Tale and Eve: Valkyrie as pack-in games. The company promises more than 20 Oculus exclusives this year. If you don't have a PC to play with Oculus, "Oculus Ready PC" bundles will be ready for pre-order in February.
The price is hefty, but those who invested at least $275 in the Kickstarter campaign will get one for free, making for a rather steep discount for anyone who put down their money (and faith) early.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Oculus Rift priced at $599
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lolnope.
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For something like this? No way. This is the early adopter price. You want it cheaper, you wait a few years, or (I assume) go with PSVR, because there's no way it'll be even close to this price.
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Thanks facebook
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I'm pretty confident VR is the real deal, but i'm also pretty certain it's going to be sometime until we see software that really makes it worth while. So i'll wait a few generations until the point there is software worth having and the pricing settles down a little.
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Maybe you'll be able to go to your local mall and get to experience one before figuring out you don't want to spend what it takes for the hardware because there aren't many things to play on it and the experience is more like an amusement park ride than casual entertainment.
But wait, this time it is different!
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You are a gentleman and a scholar! I've been curious about this for a while now. I'm in Chicago.
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It's the real deal. Seeing 3D acceleration for the first time doesn't hold a candle to the pure joy and wonder that Elite: Dangerous on a DK2 brought me and a dozen others I showed it to.
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I dunno, it's pretty amazing for Microsoft Flight Simulator and Dirt Rally, which I play a lot with it. There are a lot of neat demos that are fun for a little bit. I still play Lunar Flight quite a bit, which is one of the best experiences for the oculus rift IMO. I just really hope the consumer version doesn't make me so damn nauseous. I can handle it for about 15 min at a time and then I have to go take a break for a while.
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Haha yeah I bet. Man, I could see myself playing a game like that and not even trying to be competitive, just driving at what feels fast to be and trying to stay on the ground - if its very simmy (I've not played a rally game in a long time), I'd really get enjoyment out of just driving a rally car in cool environments.
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I felt like VR was always going to be an enthusiasts thing and at these prices it sort of has to be. Maybe 10 years down the road it'll be different.
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Tree fiddy?!
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that's over $1K canadian after taxes and shipping. lol. i would do it, but i would still have to buy a $800 card to run it. are there going to be homebrew stuff available? i would love a VR movie player and some sort of VR 360 travel videos.
$2k for VR or stay married...-
You might try Google Cardboard, it does standard and 360 videos with ease and even on the high end they're something like $50 USD.
It's not anywhere near the quality of the Rift or Vive, obviously it varies a bit phone to phone but it's shockingly solid.
Does burn the fuck out of my phone's battery though.-
I got a Google Cardboard with my NY Times subscription one day. That made me chuckle.
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Just have a party and charge your friends a $25 cover charge to play it. You'll recoup your investment in no time.
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do people think Valve is going to subsidize the Vive more than FB does for the Rift? Or do they really think the Rift could've just sold for way less and they're making some big per unit profit leaving room for competitors (who actually need to profit on the hardware) to undercut them?
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I imagine the price is pretty much in line with the tech going on here given the display resolution and all the rest that goes into it. If you put together a decent set of headphones, TrackIR, some high res displays, and the rest of the stuff you'd already be at a few hundred bucks retail pricing.
The price doesn't seem super outrageous for what it is so yeah, competitors would likely have to find investors to subsidize even further in hopes of gaining market share over OR which seems unlikely since OR has been the front runner from the beginning.
Though, Valve probably has more in-roads and pull in the gaming industry, so who knows. -
The Vive, without subsidization plus the motion controller and lightbox dealie, is probably going to come in around $1000.
That said, Valve has been prepping people for a high price pretty much since day one, whereas I think many people were expecting the Oculus to be in the ballpark of the DKs until Palmer started tweeting vague suggestions that implied people should expect a higher price a month or two ago.
Er, to answer your question, I would be shocked if the Vive gets subsidized. -
No. Valve is only in it for the software/api/protocols. They're staying away from the hardware side as I read it. That's why HTC is involved. That's the only thing that makes me think HTC might be able to deliver a lower priced quality product than Oculus. It might not be if they can't source lower prices for similar quality. But, since they have manufacturing experience I'd like to think it's at least possible. Maybe not much lower in price though. Maybe $50-75 lower.
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HTC is their hardware partner. It is in Valve's interest that HTC's hardware is both good, sells well for their VR platform, and profitable for HTC. Valve isn't staying away from the hardware and just seeing what HTC puts together. They're intrinsically linked.
So why will HTC be able to make it cheaper than Oculus? When has HTC demonstrated an ability to undercut the competition like this? Their phones were never meaningfully cheaper than Samsung or others. It's not like HTC is going to be able to order parts in significantly higher volume than Oculus in order to get a volume discount. If they're using more off the shelf parts and not custom parts then that could cut costs but likely compromises on quality. Even if they can make it say $50-75 cheaper then Oculus what does that mean for us as consumers? HTC has to make a profit on the device sales (unless Valve is subsidizing it and to a degree greater than FB is subsidizing Rift hardware). So you have to believe that the Oculus at $600 is selling for a meaningful per unit profit. Because if it's anything less than that (at cost or a per unit loss subsidized by FB) then HTC's $50-75 cheaper COGS is then just put towards their own margins and the device ends up at or near $600 all the same. I mean it's hard to imagine HTC taking on all the years of R&D costs and risks of producing a device like this for something like a $20 profit on a $550 device.-
HTC will already have relationships in place with manufacturing plants and parts suppliers that may likely gain them some leverage on pricing and will almost certainly gain them some experience in quality control for things like this.
Oculus has been building those relationships over the years with the Dev Kits so it might not mean as much as it would have if they were coming at it with a completely first gen product but the overhead around infrastructure and support and all that will likely be higher and more of a ramp for Oculus than it will be for HTC. So they've got to offset that cost/ramp somehow.-
they have existing relationships, not leverage for pricing. Experience in quality control, yes, but then they haven't been blowing away the phone market lately so the exact value of their experience can be questioned. Oculus has to offset those additional costs but they can do it by not caring about them because they have bigger aspirations than per unit profit VR headsets. HTC isn't in that position though unless they're expecting Valve to just keep funding them for years and years instead of consumers doing it.
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But since oculus is the first to name a price, everyone will be naming prices relative to that. My guess the goal will be to scramble to beat it at any cost.
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LOL. I know new tech always starts off high priced, but damn thats high.
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That's crazy.
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I don't buy most consoles on day one; I wait for software. I'll take the same stance with VR.
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Lol those responses. "But you sell more then you have a user base!" That only works in the Console space and a few others where every piece of product has to go through you and pay a licensing fee. Which isn't the case with Oculus.
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Yep, they absolutely have the Oculus Store.
After Oculus announced their propitiatory VR store it was almost comical how quickly Valve changed their position from just experimenting in the VR space to help establish a baseline for everyone to partnering with HTC to transform their experiments into a commercial product.
Supposedly a big part of why Michael Abrash left for Oculus was because Valve wasn't working on a commercial release and he wanted to be involved in that stage. Bet Valve regretted letting that happen.
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I'll do the wait and see. I see myself getting some sort of VR, but unsure which one. I don't want to end up with the HD-DVD equivalent of a VR headset.
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lol and you guys thought this was gonna be the next big thing
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They still do.
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Seems likely that it will be big eventually. They have a lot of things working against them right now, though.
Over the next few years the "big players" will become apparent. APIs will stabilize and hopefully become standardized. Manufacturing costs will go down. Application support will get better when the APIs standardize.
There's a long road for this to become huge but it will probably get there. -
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sure
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consoles are p much dead too
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I don't see it being a big thing this year in terms of adoption. Too many pixels to render and push to be affordable for some time. People are struggling to budget gaming PCs that can play games at 1080p with 30fps. The current Oculus has a higher resolution and needs 90fps to work best.
For the next few years, VR will mainly be used by enthusiasts or for use at amusement parks, conventions, and that kind of thing. That's predictable purely based on the PC requirements alone much less the cost of the VR gear.
And some people want even higher resolution and pixel density which means even more demanding graphics power. That just pushes the graphics demand beyond the reach for most people. -
It is going to be, just not this year.
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#nope
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$399 and I'm in. $599? Reminds me of the PS3 when it first came out.... I'll wait for the Vive.
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Why do you think the Vive will be cheaper? Without the FB subsidy wouldn't it be a lot more expensive, potentially, with the lighthouses?
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I'm not sure if it will be but I am willing to wait and see what they offer before jumping into bed with the Oculus.
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We know exactly what they will offer, though, just like we knew about Oculus. A headset, the lighthouse thing, some controllers, and the need for an entire empty room. There were no miscommunicated expectations here, aside from price. And even that was never really communicated outside of Palmer saying "it needs to be affordable". 600 bucks ain't cheap by any stretch, but it's certainly "affordable".
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I've heard tons of feedback saying this. Brad reiterated it on the Bombcast this week after talking about Matrix-vision. I've just heard it's not a pleasant experience unless you've got lots of empty space to move around in freely.
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Oh wait, they didn't talk about matrix vision since it was recorded before it was announced. But matrix vision seems useless if you still need all that space.
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it's all still wired. The Gear VR is the only wireless VR solution at the moment.
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Bullcrap, seated it's not any different from Oculus.
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how do you plan to leverage the lighthouse stuff for room scale, free walk VR if your room is filled with furniture in random places?
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yes but you're paying for the tech to facilitate full room experiences
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Damn that is a lot. So much for VR taking over the world hey(well at least not any time soon), secretly I am glad my body was not ready LOL :)
At that price point its going to be a niche market with out doubt. I think the biggest thing is so many(and I don't mean any of us on Shack) don't understand what type of computer you will need to run VR on properly without getting sick. To me it won't be cool if you have bad FPS and not run the games on MAX it will defeat the whole point of VR(and bad FPS will give you massive motion sickness, for it will make the lag that much worse). Having said that you sort of are forced to have the best GPU or go multi GPU if you want to run VR properly in my opinion with modern games(not a bad thing if you already are hard core gamer). So in short a VR setup is not going to be main stream and cheap by any stretch like I think a bunch out side in the normal world thought it be.
So as it stands I guess you have decide get a new 980TI or a Oculus. Hmmm that easy for me if I had to choose it be a 980 Ti with out doubt for there are not many VR titles that are worth it. With as new Ti your entire library is pimped out and juiced up, not to mention you can MAX out all the new games in 2016 etc.
On the plus side it has to start some where VR, in time prices will drop just like HDTV screens and tech will get better just like everything else. So we juts got to wait a bit unless you have the coin to drop it like its hot and the price doesn't scare you and your slinging VR size ballz in your sack.
So how many of you guys are going to get it? Are you going to upgrade your computer for it too? Or pass for this round of tech?-
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I've been upgrading my PC over the last year in preparation for VR. In the end, it wouldn't have mattered how much it was, I'd buy it. I'm completely sold on VR, hands down. I've owned the DK1 and DK2. The improvement between the two models was enormous. If CV1 is even marginally improved, strap it to my fucking eyesssssss. I'm so sold on VR, no price is too high. The content will come, I'm banking on it. VR is the future of games. There will still be traditional games forever, as their should be. Games on a flat screen. But VR is something else. Just a few years ago, this shit was a fucking dream, a total impossible dream. Now it's a reality. That is priceless to me.
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Yeah I totally agree, VR is not going to die it will be side shoot of gaming that will be around forever and keep evolving. That you can count on. No matter what you did not waste your money especially if you love the tech and clearly you do just like I love multi screens setups I do anything to make it happen.
I know exactly how you feel about VR :) \m/
I just think a lot of people thought this year we all chuck our TV screens and monitors and VR would replace them. That is clearly not going to happen, and truthfully I am really glad.
I want VR and normal gaming to both continue to evolve as to separate things we don't need only one of them and they should both be looked at as two completely different beasts.
One thing is for sure its a awesome time to be a gamer in 2016.
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First Gen early adopters always pay the most. I predict yearly-ish price drops as the supply chain and demand improves.
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I don't get everybody's surprise at this price. It's a niche piece of technology in a brand new segment with some pretty impressive specs, and it needs a high-end gaming rig to run it. What you wanted it to be $300?
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most of the people complaining about the extra couple hundred bucks probably needed $500+ in computer upgrades to run it anyway. At which point you're complaining about like $800 vs $1000.
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You won't take a loss. People will be paying upwards of a thousand dollars for these things used starting in April.
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Cheaper per pixel than the DK1.
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Need an answer quick. If I pre-order right now, will they bill the entire amount to my credit card or wait until it ships? Thanks! I want to lock one in but don't have the funds right now. If they just take my info and lock in my order with a card on file, I'll do that. Full amount charge today, I can't.
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no charge today, only upon shipping
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Thanks derelict-BRB ordering now!
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Filthysock is into timeshares.
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Considering what people pay for phones, this seems reasonable.
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I just can't help thinking that this will be like the Vita or PSP. Wonderful devices that no one would write games for because the market is too small.
For VR to really take off, it's going to have to appeal to much more than just gamers. It's another peripheral, not a replacement of anything, so it's not vital to the gaming experience.-
the problem is the PSP and Vita never did enough, especially as smartphones arrived. You need to be a pretty dedicated gamer with a pretty dedicated travel schedule to want to invest hundreds of dollars in that experience. And now with a smartphone you have games with you anyway, so it really would need to be massively better than the status quo to succeed. VR does something fundamentally different than any other screen technology that can't be replicated in a "good enough" fashion with just a larger TV.
As for the scale. The guys involved in VR honestly believe this (not necessarily OR v1) can be the last screen you ever buy for your home. FB didn't buy them just to be a videogame peripheral maker. -
There are already over 100 games supporting the Rift by launch date and over 40 for the Vive (and many still unannounced).
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Gear is damn good and 100, it's gonna get cheap.
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All it will need is a single killer app and people will jump in. What that will be who knows.
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HL3
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I got your killer app right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l28KDuRrPYU
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Kaz approves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOHqG1nc_tw
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Where do you work and can I work with you? I can help research.
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Brazzers
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Obsidian + VR = ???
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You might want the 980ti anyway to run games on the rift :-/
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More like have to have it, sure they say a 970 will be enough(more like a minimum requirement) but in reality it will play most games like shit and make you barf with a VR headset.
Good luck playing modern games @ 2160 x 1200 @ 90 FPS on MAX or even High on one 970, your gonna want that 980 Ti real fast if you get VR.
Also I don't think most are aware what it will be like if you get constant or unstable FPS drops on VR, better go buy a case of Meclizine.
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Lol no thanks.
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it's expensive but I already thought it was going to be like 500 so not to big of a deal. Don't get me wrong I would have loved for it to be cheaper. Look at Gear VR to get into that you have to spend 500+ on a phone and a 100 for the unit itself.
Vive from what I understand is suppose to be more expensive, I could have swore i saw this posted a few places before. Everything now is more expensive anyone who thought it was going to come out below 500 probably never looked into VR that much in my opinion. This GearVr is pretty much just a piece of plastic and it cost $100. Seems like the first two batches have sold out already, we went from a March ship date, to a April ship date to now they have May up.
Its not just for me or i might have have gave it a little more thought, my daughters loves playing the Gearvr so watching her and my son get all excited while playing it will make it worth it for me.
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neither is my i7 3770
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Look at all these poors. Being part of the master race doesn't come cheap!
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you'll be able to play XB1 games on a virtual theater which is nice but it's not like they all get free VR support. Shouldn't most PC games end up supporting something similar?
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i dont know but with the resolution of oculus itll prob look like shit regardless
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As much as I say, "lol nope," I'll still buy into VR, I'll just for sure be waiting to see what valve does and how the market goes before jumping in.
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Oculus Rip-off
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I love how Palmer Luckey himself said
“If something’s even $600, it doesn’t matter how good it is, how great of an experience it is — if they just can’t afford it, then it really might as well not exist?”
just two years ago. Christ what a turnaround.-
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pfft, 3 years ago he was barely out of his teens..times change a man.
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