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Oculus Rift available for preorder for $599.99, shipping in March

Who will make games for this when there's only a couple of thousand early adaptors?

No way they sold that low, maybe add a million on top of that.
PC enthusiasts drop 2k plus every half year on gfx card without breaking a sweat. $599 is nothing.
 
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Strike one.

Now let's see how Vive and PSVR respond.
 
I might have bitten, if they included their Oculus Touch with it as well. Not say you can preorder the controllers after. They know they can and will charge another $100-$200 for the controllers because Fuck you, Thats why!
 
People had unrealistic expectations. First impressions > mass adoption. The affluent and hobbyists will be more than enough for a first year or two. They introduce it to everyone else who then buy the improved gen 2 and 3 products at a lower cost. First gen of new tech is always expensive as hell.

It won't fail. It's too damn good. It's not the "gaming of the future," it's the entertainment of the future. It's a whole new way to experience multimedia, story-telling and art. Even people with a humble Gear VR, like myself, can tell you that. And this setup and even the PS VR's will be far, far superior.

As they iron out the technical flaws it will become mainstream. I'm sure Oculus and HTC are fully aware that these first years will be slow. You have to remember that up until now there has been zero revenue stream.

You may balk but the site IS crashing. People are resistant to change but it's gonna come. And this isn't going to replace TV anymore than TV replaced radio. It's a whole new platform.
 
Less than I expected it to be, actually. I think this is a pretty good price.
I would've jumped right on board, if I didn't have to build two new pc's first.
Will get one soon though, very exciting new tech.
 
the shit said march when I started my order but I honestly have no idea what the shipping date is once my order finally completed.


I hope its still march


Last I heard about the vive was that the controllers weren't as good and the headset wasn't as comfortable

Plus the rift is getting a bunch of exclusive games so I'd be hard pressed to find a reason to go the HTC route (especially since I haven't liked their actual hardware output in years)

Mine said March when I finished getting through the purchase, but when I check the order, it says April. I'm actually a bit miffed at this.
 
My friend who runs an animation company got one of these, so I guess I'll have access to it at least. $600 is a lot for something that will require at least that much investment already in GPUs. I'm still waiting for the Vive, personally.
 
As someone who owns a DK 1(alas, bought it after the Kickstarter so no free Rift for me) and is completely sold on VR...I'm out. Gonna wait and see what Sony does.Going over $450 is bananas.
 
Are the specs of the final Rift so much better compared to the Dev Kit 2? I mean... it's almost twice the price...

arguably yes. I still think it's a little high, but you're talking two displays instead of one. integrated audio. much higher quality materials. 90hz instead of 75hz. more expensive lenses.

there are substantial upgrades.
 
Woof. Guess I was way off in thinking this might go for $299-$399. Considering that I would also need to shell out about two grand to get a decent rig to power the thing, I'm out.

It's a piece of enthusiast tech at the moment, so I'll let the enthusiasts enthuse over it. Maybe I'll pick up a more reasonably priced Oculus 2.0 or 3.0 in a few years after the bugs are ironed out.
 
How is any Dev going to make any money selling games to this surely miniscule user base?

VR will be niche at any rate at first yes, but this price ensures the buying public will fit on a small sandbar.
 
Could Sony bundle the PSVR with the PS4 for around $600-$700 USD at this point in the console life cycle?

That's a tough value proposition for the Rift to overcome early on, but easier as time goes on and economies of scale start to take effect.
 
Look at what happened with Blu-ray, flat screen TVs, and other flashy 'new' consumer tech: it pandered to enthusiasts for years with pricey premium models before mainstream adoption become a real possibility. Hell, 4K is just reaching that threshold and it still isn't very popular yet.

VR is that same sort of new technology with expensive manufacturing and real R&D challenges. I don't see mainstream VR becoming a reality until costs go down - and as much as we want cheap & quality VR, that isn't going to happen overnight.

On the subsidy - no company in their right mind would eat that big of a loss per unit. They probably aren't making much profit (if any) on the hardware at $600! It isn't sound business practice to be such a gigantic loss leader with competitors snapping at your heels and no guarantee that you'll be the product left standing after the melee.

Give it 3-4 years and VR will be ready for mass-market adoption. Until then, expect to be charged plenty for this new stuff.


Yeah. I was kind of hoping this wasn't the case as I wanted to try VR sooner rather than later but, it looks like I'll be waiting for a while; as I suspected I would be. It sucks but, it's how tech is. If I have to wait until 2020 for it to be affordable, then I have to wait. I just hope it doesn't die in the time frame.
 
And to think that I was planning upgrading my GPU when VR becomes prolific and great games are being developed. I think I'll still be fine though and the timing doesn't matter. My R9 280 already runs everything on high (only cost me less than $150 so why drop $300 on a GTX 970?).
 
Yep. I'm definitely waiting for the second generation for picking up an oculus or the vive.

Still interested in the PSVR if cheap enough (<=399$).
 
I got in right away and got to the final screen early while it was showing March, but every attempt at finalizing payment failed with a generic error message until another ~30 minutes or so passed. During that time of attempting over and over again, the finalization page changed to show April instead of March, but when the order finally went through I got March after all, possibly because I was held earlier in the queue due to getting to the final step quickly.
I had March and the same error but then got fucked to April
 
But if you don't have the install base quickly developers are not going to develop for it and once development starts to dry up its hard to put it back on track. So I m sure Sony will not want to make it a failure

Lots of developers are making content for VR right now. There is no chicken/egg issue.

How much is Sony spending to build this thing? I don't think they're gonna subsidize it. The tech is comparable to OR in most ways, I would think. The PSVR has that breakout box to do some of the legwork that the OR does in software. I wouldn't be surprised at $500 for the PSVR, I really wouldn't.
 
Look at what happened with Blu-ray, flat screen TVs, and other flashy 'new' consumer tech: it pandered to enthusiasts for years with pricey premium models before mainstream adoption become a real possibility. Hell, 4K is just reaching that threshold and it still isn't very popular yet.

VR is that same sort of new technology with expensive manufacturing and real R&D challenges. I don't see mainstream VR becoming a reality until costs go down - and as much as we want cheap & quality VR, that isn't going to happen overnight.

On the subsidy - no company in their right mind would eat that big of a loss per unit. They probably aren't making much profit (if any) on the hardware at $600! It isn't sound business practice to be such a gigantic loss leader with competitors snapping at your heels and no guarantee that you'll be the product left standing after the melee.

Give it 3-4 years and VR will be ready for mass-market adoption. Until then, expect to be charged plenty for this new stuff.

New technologies like this depend on content support, but Blu-Ray and flat screen televisions aren't the same. There's a MASSIVE difference in cost and labor between what it takes for a studio to release their films in a new resolution, compared to a developer going through a 1-3 year development cycle to create a game that can only be played on VR peripherals. A studio can support a new format with little or no repercussions due to the fact that the same television show or movie can still be sold in traditional formats.
 
I was joking^^ I know that the US has very low taxes. With taxes that would be 650$ if we take 10%. Let's say 670$ with shipping. That 625€. Hmm...

The fact that Oculus is apparently charing over 750€ (some say even 800-900€ :/) is just ... disgusting.

D'oh, lol.

Isn't VAT on average is 20%?

That gets it closer to the price, but yeah, still seems a little high.
 
Holy shit guys. I didn't expect that price, but I ordered it anway.

741 &#8364; with shipping cost to Germany is way too expensive...but yeah, couldn't resist.

Is VAT included? I hope so!
 
A lot of companies do that.
Cheap marketing strategy.

Examples - xiaomi

Palmer Luckey on Twitter : "Wow, people really want Rifts. There must be a lot of lurkers in the VR community" which translates into "Wow, look how my product is hype, BUY IT, it's cheap, come on, you're a pioneer, I promise we have games, we even have an adapter for the Xbox one controller that wasn't made for VR"
 
I want VR but not that badly.. Hope Vive or PSVR is more affordable. Would've bought for around $350 like they said it was at first.
 
What surprises me is that they still seem to be set up like a mom and pop shop as far as international distribution is concerned.
With all that Facebook money, know how and time to set things up I would have expected to be able to get that thing shipped from somewhere in Europe/Asia/Australia.
 
I would've thought Sony would do anything to avoid another "Five Hundred Ninety Nine U.S. Dollars" scenario. They just took it head on.
 
I got in right away and got to the final screen early while it was showing March, but every attempt at finalizing payment failed with a generic error message until another ~30 minutes or so passed. During that time of attempting over and over again, the finalization page changed to show April instead of March, but when the order finally went through I got March after all, possibly because I was held earlier in the queue due to getting to the final step quickly.

This happened to me too, but I only got to the confirmation page when I refreshed the final step manually. Shows up under my order history on my Oculus account, but I still don't have a confirmation e-mail or any kind of PayPal e-mail notice either.
 
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