Oculus founder Palmer Luckey says that the Rift going to cost more than $350.
2016 will finally see the long-awaited consumer version of the Oculus Rift hit store shelves, but if you were planning on buying one you had better save up. Speaking with Road to VR at its recent Connect event, founder Palmer Luckey stated that the device will cost more than $350 at launch.
When asked if the Rift would be coming in at the $350 ballpark that was initially discussed back in the Kickstarter days, Luckey responded that “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 explained that “The reason for that is that we’ve added a lot of technology to this thing beyond what existed in the DK1 and DK2 days.”
“Are you going to optimize for absolute lowest price possible, even if it’s gonna be a lower quality experience? Or do you try to say ‘you know what, this is the first consumer VR headset that were going to be pushing out to people. We need to put a stake in the ground and say: this is the best possible experience that we were able to make. No compromises were made in terms of quality.'”
Luckey stopped short of actually announcing how much the device will cost, but his comments do suggest we’re looking at at least $400.
This is somewhat disappointing, as I feel that the Rift can only really be successful if it is incredibly widespread, and becomes a device that a huge majority of gamers use. At $400, its likely to become another expensive PC gaming niche gimmick.
Source: Road to VR
