Oculus Rift Discussion

[BoneSnapDeez]

Almost $700 for me with sales tax and shipping....Hot damn....I'm gonna have to debate this one....

I'd recommend buying 700 Atari games instead.

[dsheinem]

What do they think this is a PS3 or something?

Sony's PS3 price was stupid, too, but at least they were coming off of the most successful console of all time, had a hit with their first console too, and had some built up clout with the gaming public. They also had a lot more new games at launch and a lot of reasonable expectations that there'd be a flood of games from first and third parties over the years. The Oculus has none of this going for it...

[Pulsar_t]

VR is still an expensive toy for geeks with disposable income, and this price range confirms it. As much as I hate Glassholes, augmented reality is the way forward, and it will be implemented in real world applications in industry and medicine etc as well as interactive entertainment. VR is an amusing sideshow till feasible AR technology comes along.

[isiolia]

Yeah I really think that hiding the price till preorder was a bad idea. I mean up till this point the most info we got was it was "roughly" in the ball park of the original $300-$350 price range they were shooting for. At $650+ after taxes and shipping that is a pretty giant ball park even with a XB1 Controller and 2 "free" games.

Definitely creating a backlash. I still wound up preordering one (as plenty of others have, given that the ship date for new preorders has gone from April to May), but I think the higher price would be going over better with more explanation behind it.
With the soft price ranges from all the competitors so far, it's likely that it just takes more hardware to do "right" than anticipated. Personally, I'd rather that be the priority than cutting corners just to hit a price point.

Half wonder if there was some gentleman's agreement between Oculus, HTC, and Sony to leave breathing room in the MSRPs in order to get the experience right first. Otherwise it does leave the others a huge opportunity.

[ElkinFencer10]

One of my other big gripes is that they've already said that they're working on a new VR headset that will probably launch in 2 years. If you're going to make me pay over $600 for something, don't tell me up front that you'll replace it in 2 years time. I know that it's not quite like game consoles with "generations" completely (or at least mostly) incompatible with one another, but at least we KNEW the PS3 would have a bare minimum of 4 or 5 years until it became obsolete (and, as turned out being the case, hopefully more). Oculus is saying up front that a better one will be out in 2 years.

[noiseredux]

One of my other big gripes is that they've already said that they're working on a new VR headset that will probably launch in 2 years. If you're going to make me pay over $600 for something, don't tell me up front that you'll replace it in 2 years time. I know that it's not quite like game consoles with "generations" completely (or at least mostly) incompatible with one another, but at least we KNEW the PS3 would have a bare minimum of 4 or 5 years until it became obsolete (and, as turned out being the case, hopefully more). Oculus is saying up front that a better one will be out in 2 years.

hey you guys remember when the Saturn launched unexpectedly at $400 and then Bernie Stolar announced that Sega's future would be with the Dreamcast?

Something just reminded me of that.

[Snatch1414]

I was never really in for one unless it was somehow unrealistically low price-wise, but I think this is nuts. I understand it, but I still think it's nuts. Then you upgrade your PC, then you buy the touch controllers. I mean that's a huge expenditure. The price point goes beyond the usual buying stuff just to have it that people like us often do, and you know there will be a slimmed down version in a year or two.

[Exhuminator]

don't tell me up front that you'll replace it in 2 years time

Come on now, surely a social media company knows how to run a burgeoning electronics subsidiary.

===

I'm going to be straight up honest with you dudes. This thing could still cost $2000 and it would sell to a large demographic that remains silent out of shame. Nope I don't mean the folks who want to play FPS and dungeon crawlers in VR, or perhaps be a virtual astronaut or pretend surgeon or anything lofty like that.

I mean ronery weebs who desperately want an anime girlfriend that they can interact with in the most realistic way possible. Yep. Now I could back up this statement with a laundry list of links showing various uses of ORVR, convincingly illustrating what people have done so far with this concept. Trouble is those links are all highly NSFW (though quite amusing in a schadenfreude kind of way). Most of these projects are indie basement developer stuff, but larger companies are starting to catch on to the demographic potential. Here's a SFW example:

In short, there are a lot of people willing to pay major money for a virtual reality waifu they can virtually bone. Listen if people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for RealDolls (and they do, every day), they are certainly willing to pay for a far more convincing artificial girlfriend that comes with physically interactive elements. And if I was selling Oculus Rift, I might try to bleed those folks dry first too, before hitting the wider waters at a less lucrative price point.

[Snatch1414]

Yeah I think you have something there. Plus the thing is selling out like crazy so whatever. MS sold 15 million Kinects and it was never anything but a complete piece of shit so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[ElkinFencer10]

Yeah I think you have something there. Plus the thing is selling out like crazy so whatever. MS sold 15 million Kinects and it was never anything but a complete piece of shit so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Both this and Exhuminator's points are really good and ones that I hadn't considered before. So while I'm still butthurt, I guess that's really most all of what it is - butthurt. I suppose I'm forced to admit that their pricing does at least somewhat make sense, even if it's still a dick move in my book given all their "around $350" crap.