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[Doc Holliday]

I am shocked...

That people are shocked that VR is expensive. Really, what did you all expect?

They made a big deal about VR being affordable, dk1 and dk 2 were under 350. Now the required pc specs are higher then previously thought. People have good reason to be shocked.

 

[Bsigg12]

Please Sony and HTC save VR and price your shit lower. This price point is way to high.

Vive will be higher, PSVR should be lower.

 

[Goldenroad]

As a Canadian, all I can do is laugh. It's really a bit less than I thought it would be though. I guessed $700 US.

 

[Dez_]

At least my PC is ready, but I'll think I'll wait until the Rift gets more established before pick one of these up.

 

[Z3M0G]

It was like this with DK2 if I remember correctly. They must have already sold through the first batch as predicted.

Are we thinking hundreds of units per batch, or thousands?

 

[InaudibleWhispa]

Wait seriously?

Damn, that shuts the door on me straight off, my MB only has 2. I can use 2 more from a header on the MB, but I'd have to get a new case to use those.

Couldn't you get a USB 3 PCI express card for $20?

 

[gnexus]

My awesome Paint skills in action. But yeah, I'll be expecting quite a bit back for income tax sometime next month, so that will go to funding my Rift purchase. It's a tough pill to swallow, but I'm hyped.

 

[BadWolf]

Shrug. I'll probably end up getting both, but I have more faith in what the Rift can deliver in terms of visuals and performance.

Well yeah, the more powerful the PC you have the better visuals you'll get.

 

[xrnzaaas]

I'm really curious about the sales numbers, especially long term. And most likely so is the competition.

 

[JoeyJungle]

Tax: $43.58
Shipping: $32.18
Estimated Total: $674.76

WTF is this bullshit? $30 shipping on a $600 product?

 

[PodcastFips]

I was under the impression that in the €741 all customs, delivery costs and taxes were included. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

It will be shipped from the US. Customs are not included.

 

[Acosta]

Not for me yet, I will wait and build a new PC around it next year with the next iteration of GPUs. I don't have that kind of money now, especially for something I'm still not 100% convinced.

Hope PSVR can be more affordable and serve as bridge.

 

[Hyperbole]

Everyone praying for Sony to introduce affordable VR. Sony is gonna drop the 499 on us.

The hints they keep dropping say around a console price. 349. Though that could be for just the headset and box and not including camera and motion controller. Do we have a likely 'killer app' for VR yet? I mean a real killer app that all demographics will want to spend hours on? Spaceship, driving, adult entertainment are all niche IMO.

(Yay me 1st Gaf post!)

 

[shiftplusone]

Why is everyone acting like VR has to sell 10 billion units in its first quarter to be successful?

It's niche tech for a niche market at this point.

It doesn't need mainstream success to be a success this early in the game

 

[Jack cw]

741€ with shipping here in Germany...

This is incredible. I really doubt that this will even reach niche status. The beef you need in a proper rig isn't cheap either.

 

[Raide]

Similar to most Apple products, I will wait for a revision or two before jumping in. Price for Entry is just way too much to justify.

 

[harSon]

Did they mislead us about stock, or is it selling above expectations?

Pre-orders for Oculus Rift open tomorrow, January 6, and according to company founder Palmer Luckey, the long awaited VR headset won't sell out. In a post on Twitter, Lucky said there's "no chance of Rift pre-orders selling out." In a subsequent tweet, Luckey noted that if pre-order numbers "somehow exhaust all the stock [they] are building up, later orders will just have a later ship date."

They made it seem like launch stock was plentiful

 

[wanderingprostheyltite]

Ignoring the price, that's really friggin soon.

Not soon enough! I've been spoiled by the GEARVR pre order. That was two weeks from pre order to door. I don't wanna go back to Oculus time :/

 

[Ninja Scooter]

There was no risk with HDTVs. It was TV, but better. VR is something completely different, which can either be really good or really bad in the market. However, the sticker shock + an unknown isn't great for mainstream appeal.

The fact that there is a risk with VR is why you weren't going to see a ton of mainstream adoption out the gate no matter what the price was. No mainstream consumer is going to drop $200-300 on a VR headset when VR is such an unknown. The first iteration of this tech is meant to get it out there, get people talking about it, get a little buzz building, but not necessarily to have grandparents and soccer mom's using the thing. That is still years away. I think the people behind the tech realize this and knew this going in and based things like pricing and shipment numbers on that. Considering these pre-orders appear to be getting snatched up pretty briskly, I'd say they judged their market pretty well in that regard. The people who were expecting this to be the next Wii-mote or Kinect were the only ones kidding themselves, as all signs pointed to VR having a completely different tech life cycle. I don't deny the price is expensive, and priced out of most people's range, but that doesn't necessarily mean Oculus made a mistake or VR is dead.

 

[El Topo]

It will be shipped from the US. Customs are not included.

Thanks for the swift correction.

 

[BennyBlanco]

About $100 too much for me. If PSVR can be rigged to work on PC and is significantly cheaper I'll just get that, also have a ps4 so why not.

 

[Numb]

So expensive
Competition watching

 

[zackmorris]

What were people expecting for a price? 599 doesn't seem crazy to me at all. I'd bet PSVR is right there with it, maybe 499.

 

[NeOak]

WTF is this bullshit? $30 shipping on a $600 product?

Expect a rock

 

[HotHamBoy]

Well, I don't know guys but I've seen this again and again for the last century.

When adjusted for inflation, the Atari 2600 cost +$750 and required a color TV, which was still pretty expensive in 1977.

I think VR is going to be fine.

 

[EviLore]

Bleed the early adopters. That's a terrible price point. And that is subsidised as well??? Consumer friendly for next consoles in 2020 I reckon.

Don't shed any tears for early adopters. Anyone with a March or April arrival can probably profit $1k on eBay. And I doubt many people will even be willing to flip theirs, since the consumer rift is legit Goodbye Real World.

 

[Impulsor]

So us Europeans have to add customs tax to the final 741€ price tag?

 

[Hawk269]

There are already 36 million people, closer to 40 when it comes out, that has the ps4. How many people you think has a computer that can support the rift, and have 600 dollars lying around to buy it?

PS VR will still be niche, but it has every chance of being the device that breaks into the mainstream. Oculus need to convince casuals that the experience is worth 600 dollars, and after they do that they need to get lucky that these consumers have a computer that can run it.

For finantial success for now, plug annd play experience and lower price point trumps technical superiority any time of day.

History has shown that "add-on's" for consoles have been a failure. The original Kinect was however very successful initially and sold amazing numbers, but it also did not cost the same as the console itself.

If the PSVR is just as expensive or more than the console itself, how many people would really "jump in"? I think that the PSVR will be a neat and fun product, but I also believe the user experience will be drastically lower than what you get with the OC.

To your point you need a beefy PC, but the device is not costing more than the PC itself, which in the PSVR if we assume the price is equal to the console itself, that imho would cause people to think before buying. We are talking a peripheral that is as much as ore more than the console itself, you really think that will equal mass adoption?

 

[gamechanger87]

Prices drop on fixed hardware as production scales up. But VR will need to continue to iterate rapidly to improve. So it'll be more like iPhone like a previous poster said. price may stay the same to allow for the tech to improve (higher res screens, eye tracking etc)

The price drops on fixed hardware only if the demand is really high. This stuff can't be compared to iphones or consoles. You aren't expecting to sell tens of millions of these.

If you are making these components, you charge a pretty penny for these short production runs.

 

[spannicus]

I was pissed i missed out on playing Alien Isolation in VR. Hopefully more games like that get released with VR support.

 

[Vyse The Legend]

The hints they keep dropping say around a console price. 349. Though that could be for just the headset and box and not including camera and motion controller. Do we have a likely 'killer app' for VR yet? I mean a real killer app that all demographics will want to spend hours on? Spaceship, driving, adult entertainment are all niche IMO.

(Yay me 1st Gaf post!)

PS4 launched at $400. So, don't expect less than that for the PS VR, which has a separate processing unit, and you should be fine.

 

[Ryaaan14]

 

[sankt-Antonio]

I was under the impression that in the €741 all customs, delivery costs and taxes were included. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

If it is indeed shipped from the US they can't include EU import tax.

 

[Randomizer123454444]

Did they mislead us about stock, or is it selling above expectations?



They made it seem like launch stock was plentiful

Preorders selling out even with this price point would be a good sign for VR. It would mean that the cheaper versions will be huge.

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

Nah, Sony's going to take a loss on the units and make a profit on Gran Turismo.

Then they'll post a loss of billions of dollars like they do every year.

Sony stake in this more than just making money off of the VR hardware, so they could definitely lose money on each unit. They can make this up by selling consoles and software at a profit. That's the big differentiator between the two is that Sony has stake in the hardware their VR runs on and also in the creation and distribution of software.

 

[Dusktildawn48]

Would love to know my fucking ship date.

 

[wapplew]

I'll wait a year for Chinese company cheap but mostly same quality knock-off at $199.
I'm looking at you Xiao Mi.

 

[KennyLinder]

Has anyone made a video of the Spanish man laughing at the price? Came here expecting it alongside the Hitler one.

 

[AwesomeMeat]

Please Sony and HTC save VR and price your shit lower. This price point is way to high.

If you think the Vive is going to be any better you are crazy. HTC can't afford to sell the Vive for anything but a profit - and it also includes the lighthouse stations and the motions controls.

If you don't like the price you might just be waiting another generation.

 

[civilstrife]

Gotta say, though I think the Facebook acquisition was definitely the right move for VR as a whole, I miss the young scrappy Oculus that would have shipped a much less polished Rift to consumers in early 2015 at half the price.

 

[Shuggananas]

Don't shed any tears for early adopters. Anyone with a March or April arrival can probably profit $1k on eBay. And I doubt many people will even be willing to flip theirs, since the consumer rift is legit Goodbye Real World.

Eh, preorders are still cancellable

 

[CarbonFire]

Couldn't you get a USB 3 PCI express card for $20?

Technically yes, but at this point I think I'll wait to see how VIVE and PSVR shake out before dropping the big bucks I honestly like the elegance of HTC's headset tracking more than Oculus, just worried about the price of that headset if this is coming in at $600

 

[Diablohead]

Don't shed any tears for early adopters. Anyone with a March or April arrival can probably profit $1k on eBay. And I doubt many people will even be willing to flip theirs, since the consumer rift is legit Goodbye Real World.

Look after yourself in the waifu world!

 

[Anno]

They made a big deal about VR being affordable, dk1 and dk 2 were under 350. Now the required pc specs are higher then previously thought. People have good reason to be shocked.

Didn't they say a 970 was recommended close to a year ago? Or did something else change?

I like though how people have went from massively over-optimistic on VR as a concept to massively doom-and-gloom in like two hours when probably nothing has really changed at all.

 

[NolbertoS]

Yeah, VR is priced to niche hobbyists now. I'll await till its affordable to the average joe, before I buy one. Early adopters get to test thr bugs like usual

 

[deadfolk]

Seems it comes from Ireland.

Yet they still charge €43 to ship to Ireland.

 

[Anuson.Phan]

If PSVR base package is 399 (Just the PSVR) and full package 459.99 ( PSVR, Camera, Move) I will be okay with the price and buy the base package.

 

[warthog]

Ouch, more than I expected. I hope Sony will stay sub 400$.

 

[Memento]

PlayStation VR Bundle with No Man's Sky + Camera for $399 would obliterate any competition.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Sticker shock for sure. With the limited content that will be available, VR has a big hill to climb. Ball is in Sony's court.

Even in the highly unlikely event that PSVR is half the price of Oculus 1.0 and/or Vive, it won't have half the apps, games, and content access. The PC side of VR is easily the greener pasture for an early adopter due to open development with the lack of software restrictions and content control. The VR development community will be far more productive on PC and quicker on turnaround than on any console platform. The difference in upfront price won't necessarily mean a better deal in long run.