The PS3 was quite the pricey console at launch. In 2006, the 20GB version cost $499 while the 60GB version was priced at $599. And note that Sony sold PS3 for loss (console didn´t pay for its development, games made the profit for Sony). VR is new tech and expensive, you can by VR devices that cost over 1000 USD. And those don´t have head movement tracking. VR is like electric cars, cost a lot and only some people can afford.
Rift Higher Price than Expected? $600
- Thread starter Obsidian Ant
- Start date
Indeed it is at the back of my mind. I'm actually glad my shipping date is not until May. But apparently some orders will get moved forward as they work through the "fake orders". Doesn't seem to be any way of viewing your expected shipping date after you've ordered. I'm hoping they will send out emails when they have a date for charging your card.
I like the idea of the forward-facing camera on the Vive, I think I would find that very useful. Whether or not that is enough to make me choose the Vive over the Rift remains to be seen.
Just in case Gabe Newell is reading I'd just like to say "Arrgh! over £500 is way too much to charge! The average Joe Shmoe will never pay that much for VR!"
There must be a lot of people over at Valve and HTC breathing a sigh of relief that they can put a decent price on their product now that Oculus has taken the brunt of the reaction. But then the Valve platform products have never shied away from charging a premium price. Look at some of the prices for Steam Machines.
In an ideal world Valve would've brought their product to market first and Oculus would have then slammed home the market penetration by selling us the headset we could all afford. Also in an ideal world it wouldn't have been FaceBook that they sold out to. A hardware company that understands how to price products to maximise their profits would've been nice, especially if it were a company that makes mobile phone screens.
It would've also prevented an association with that personal information vampire, Mark Zuckerberg. I've just read Palmer Luckey's AMA. What a contrast in characters! You do get the feeling that Palmer Luckey is doing everything in his power to ensure nobody has a nauseous experience using his headset. This doesn't just include using high quality electronics in his headset. It means also controlling the quality of the software available for it.
yeah that could really sting if you move up the list unaware and loose the option to cancel, although i guess if demand is still there, you would likely be able to return it unopened and get a full refund #hassle though. i have the benefit of only having had a very short experience of the DK2, so i really haven't been spoiled by VR yet. i do have a little set aside for some system upgrades this year, so won't even be able to consider VR until 2017 at the earliest [if at all] and i have to agree, i do like the forward facing camera on the Vive, i think that may even be a deciding factor if i do jump into VR ownership.
*of course, by 2017, there will be 3 or 4 consumer units in the market place, so will hopefully have more options, better prices [maybe even 2nd hand] as the tech settles*
Ouch, you must go through a lot of tin foil hats. So much hate and conspiracy in this post.
The comparison of mobile phones to VR tech is valid if you take their function out of it and concentrate on the technology. The high-end mobile phones are pushing technology to pack high-resolution screens with fast processors and GPUs while keeping power consumption low. They differentiate through screens, optics and audio. A £600 phone might cost £300 in terms of components, with manufacturing and R&D costs to recoup, and that's with economies of scale applied (i.e. they're looking to sell volumes in the millions, with components common across lines and variants). Introducing a new technology to the manufacturing process causes costs to increase until those processes become common, so (for example) when Samsung added a curved edge to their screens that will have increased manufacturing costs. We're also used to the cost of phones being spread out over the course of a 18-24 month contract where we'll actually pay *more* than their retail price.
VR in its current form is a new set of technologies, with the majority of the major components (screen, optics, plastics, tracking) requiring new processes. The volumes (hundreds of thousands) are lower than mobile phones so while economies of scale apply, they aren't necessarily as effective in bringing costs down. So I can understand that the Rift could easily run to £400 cost (which is what we're looking at if you take tax and delivery out). For those hoping that the Vive will be cheaper or on par, yes, HTC will be able to leverage lower manufacturing costs and will probably have better economies of scale on standard components which will be shared with their other electronics businesses. But the expensive bits are still the bespoke screens, optics and plastics and there's no magic way for them to reduce those costs. They're also not going to be able to sell at or below cost like Oculus are, so even if they *can* manufacture for less than £400 per unit they'll want a decent margin on it to recoup their R&D costs.
Really what I'm saying here is that competition isn't going to drive price reduction, as that relies on trimming of margins. In a couple of years time, prices to produce these bits of kit will drop, and PCs that can run them will be almost ubiquitous. That's when we'll see this generation of VR becoming accessible to the masses, and by that point the enthusiast crowd will be looking to replace their units with higher-resolution, lower latency and higher-FOV screens and better tracking and that'll in turn come at a premium (as will the computer hardware to drive them).
VR in its current form is a new set of technologies, with the majority of the major components (screen, optics, plastics, tracking) requiring new processes. The volumes (hundreds of thousands) are lower than mobile phones so while economies of scale apply, they aren't necessarily as effective in bringing costs down. So I can understand that the Rift could easily run to £400 cost (which is what we're looking at if you take tax and delivery out). For those hoping that the Vive will be cheaper or on par, yes, HTC will be able to leverage lower manufacturing costs and will probably have better economies of scale on standard components which will be shared with their other electronics businesses. But the expensive bits are still the bespoke screens, optics and plastics and there's no magic way for them to reduce those costs. They're also not going to be able to sell at or below cost like Oculus are, so even if they *can* manufacture for less than £400 per unit they'll want a decent margin on it to recoup their R&D costs.
Really what I'm saying here is that competition isn't going to drive price reduction, as that relies on trimming of margins. In a couple of years time, prices to produce these bits of kit will drop, and PCs that can run them will be almost ubiquitous. That's when we'll see this generation of VR becoming accessible to the masses, and by that point the enthusiast crowd will be looking to replace their units with higher-resolution, lower latency and higher-FOV screens and better tracking and that'll in turn come at a premium (as will the computer hardware to drive them).
I'm not even sure why he quoted my post in his reply.
I didn't preorder but not because of the price. First I'll have to experience the Rift in action to see if it works for me. I get motion sickness easily so the VR implementation must be free of any stutter and lag. If they can pull this off I would not hesitate to spend even 1000 USD on a VR headset.
Guys guys. You will get plenty of notice before they ship your Oculus, going on my experiences with them for DK1 and DK2. You get a couple of emails and they check that your payment and delivery details are still correct first and then once all that's confirmed they process. They dont just move your order forward and process it sneakily.
Thanks that is reassuring. Paranoia level downgraded from high to medium
Yeah I'm concerned about the motion sickness too, I'm determined to try one of the HMDs in the next few months. I felt a bit nauseous in the SRV this morning going over some very bumpy terrain and that was just on my ultrawide with Freesync turned on, never mind in VR!
Thanks that is reassuring. Paranoia level downgraded from high to medium
Yeah I'm concerned about the motion sickness too, I'm determined to try one of the HMDs in the next few months. I felt a bit nauseous in the SRV this morning going over some very bumpy terrain and that was just on my ultrawide with Freesync turned on, never mind in VR!
Welcome mate glad to help
Oh when you do try a HMD for gods sake dont try something full on like people did with the rollercoaster demo on the DK1. Oculus couldnt have released a less suitable type of demo for people to try out! Take it easy, try the mellow stuff first and move on from there and you'll be absolutely fine. When I got my dk1 I was a bit wobbly with the helicopter demo but after taking it easy after about a day or two I had no ill effects whatsoever since. I play FPS with no problems for example and nothing bothers me at all. CV1 or Vive will be far superior for this as well. You'll be grand
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A 4K display + TrackIR isn't even close to the experience you have with an Oculus Rift DK2, let alone what the experience (when supported) will be like with the actual Rift... I don't need to imagine immersion in my DK2, I certainly won't need my imagination in my Rift when it arrives.
It's because I was agreeing with you that the CV1 does contain a lot of expensive electronics.
Just because that's the case doesn't mean I don't want a cheapest product possible though.. Basically what I'm looking for is the moon on a stick. Is that too much to ask?
As for my tinfoil hat. It's purely there to protect me from Zuckerberg. The people who need them the most are the ones who don't think he represents any threat.
Ah I see, sorry, when I read your post it didn't seem to have anything to do with mine. I agree about Zuckerberg, I am unable to trust him either and have never used Facebook so the buy out was, at least initially, a bit of a let down for me. Nothing to big to stop me buying the Rift though!
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I can do you a stick. If you're a glass half full kind of guy then that should suffice.
Palmer Luckey has repeatedly said that you won't need a Fartbook account to use the Rift. Indeed, when I played around with the Gear VR I was pleased to see this was also the case there. I guess if you're creating an Oculus account then you're technically giving data to the parent company but it does seem, so far, as if Oculus is being run almost as an independent company. Maybe scale the tinfoil hat down to a tinfoil kippah?
Me neither. I'm not cutting off my nose to spite my face.
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I went ahead and ordered it.
but I have to say its to expensive especially for something that will be out dated in no time cos Nvidia is working on a system that calculates per eye.
that is one gpu per eye.
something the current version of the oculus is probably not prepared for.
this might be the thing why I have to cancel the order.
but I have until may to decide this...
but I have to say its to expensive especially for something that will be out dated in no time cos Nvidia is working on a system that calculates per eye.
that is one gpu per eye.
something the current version of the oculus is probably not prepared for.
this might be the thing why I have to cancel the order.
but I have until may to decide this...
Hasn't that been around for a while now? Isn't that what VR SLI is?
Might be referring to this: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-virtual-reality-device-light-field-2018/
As a DK2 owner I don't agree that VR is currently better than a good high rez monitor for gaming. IMO the resolution is too low (and it's not much better with the CV1). Things close look ok but even playing a racing game you can hardly make out the corners of a track. In ED ships that are anything other than really close you can hardly see.
IMO a decent high resolution, high refresh rate monitor with Gsync/Freesync is a much better investment. You can play all the game you have and they will look awesome. My DK2 has mainly gathered dust these last few months as there is naff all to play on it and what there is isn't brilliant. ED's probably the best of the bunch and if you know my opinions on ED then you'd know how crap that is.
You think judder in ED is bad on your monitor? You monitor won't make you sick as a dog for a few hours if it happens (even with decent VR legs this can still happen, trust me).
VR is cool don't get me wrong but not £530 cool IMO. I would have paid £400 all in and winced, £530 you can forget it.
I also do not agree that the Vive WILL be more expensive than the Rift. No one knows what it will cost. All that's been said is that it would be more expensive than the Rift but this was when OVR were crowing that it would cost around $350 not $775/£530. So no one knows, you might be right and you might be wrong, just stop posting things you don't actually know just to justify the price of the CV1 to yourself.
End of the day there are a hell of a lot of people saying that they were going to buy one and now aren't due to the cost. Some people are happy with the cost, I bet a lot of them are talking themselves into it though. There's nothing like a bit of confirmation bias to make you post things on the internet about how great the thing is you spent a lot of money on. Remember to tell people you demo it to the truth about how much you paid, watch their shocked disbelieving faces.
I still think VR is the future of gaming, we're just really no where near it at the moment though.
IMO a decent high resolution, high refresh rate monitor with Gsync/Freesync is a much better investment. You can play all the game you have and they will look awesome. My DK2 has mainly gathered dust these last few months as there is naff all to play on it and what there is isn't brilliant. ED's probably the best of the bunch and if you know my opinions on ED then you'd know how crap that is.
You think judder in ED is bad on your monitor? You monitor won't make you sick as a dog for a few hours if it happens (even with decent VR legs this can still happen, trust me).
VR is cool don't get me wrong but not £530 cool IMO. I would have paid £400 all in and winced, £530 you can forget it.
I also do not agree that the Vive WILL be more expensive than the Rift. No one knows what it will cost. All that's been said is that it would be more expensive than the Rift but this was when OVR were crowing that it would cost around $350 not $775/£530. So no one knows, you might be right and you might be wrong, just stop posting things you don't actually know just to justify the price of the CV1 to yourself.
End of the day there are a hell of a lot of people saying that they were going to buy one and now aren't due to the cost. Some people are happy with the cost, I bet a lot of them are talking themselves into it though. There's nothing like a bit of confirmation bias to make you post things on the internet about how great the thing is you spent a lot of money on. Remember to tell people you demo it to the truth about how much you paid, watch their shocked disbelieving faces.
I still think VR is the future of gaming, we're just really no where near it at the moment though.
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