Hardware & Technical The Oculus Rift is available for pre-order. What do you think of the price ?

[natte hond]

Yeah, he's tried to explain and apologise. I see him as pretty genuine, comparatively, so will give the benefit of the doubt on this occasion.

after my inquiry of Oled prices I tend to believe the statement of not making money on it is true

if so what will this do for the competition?
it might as well be the death of Vive and or others.
I hope not monopoly is never a good thing.

 

[Surfinjo]

after my inquiry of Oled prices I tend to believe the statement of not making money on it is true

if so what will this do for the competition?
it might as well be the death of Vive and or others.
I hope not monopoly is never a good thing.

Before we all reach for the boo hoo tissues, lets remember the marketing is being managed by the biggest company in the world.

If they are not going to earn any money at the starting price it's because they have decided the product has a long term future, in other words, they don't anticipate any significant competition in the short to medium term. So, their initial price will be set to recover initial costs as quickly as possible to that after that, all income is profit.

From an economic perspective, both smart and modern.

It also goes some way to explain the pre-market hype, which began with the so called launch on kickstarter.

Not to criticise this company. I think it shows just how smart the people behind the Rift are.

In the end, a product will be available with enormous expectations, massive recommendations from most who've tried it, (The salesman in Novatech to mention one), more importantly, games companies falling over themselves to include the necessary code in their games, before the product is available commercially! (I know a woman in Finland who runs a small software company and is experimenting with it on her free stuff).

All in all, they end up with a market ready product which barely needs advertising. We end up with what we get.

Even if it ends up being utterly an useless fad, we still get our hands on the greatest marketing success since Viz!

 

[jabokai]

Here's why it is so expensive - the box contains the oculus headset itself, an xbox controller, two games, and bluetooth/wireless clip on headphones:

1. I already have a controller
2I already have headphones
3. I will have to probably sell the games.

You sound so bothered by it in the posts you've made, not to mention "not being able to see your hands", that in your case I'd simply recommend skipping it and waiting for something more suitable. You won't be satisfied and, for you, it seems it would be money wasted.

 

[Patrick_68000]

At the terrible risk of sounding utterly clichéd Beauty is in the Eye of the beholder.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f4/d1/dc/f4d1dcd1d6009e8adfe4c5d39d302688.jpg

Magnificent ! Here is a very beautiful work of art

 

[Surfinjo]

You sound so bothered by it in the posts you've made, not to mention "not being able to see your hands", that in your case I'd simply recommend skipping it and waiting for something more suitable. You won't be satisfied and, for you, it seems it would be money wasted.

I was thinking the same thing Jontycampbell. But am somewhat envious that you have one.

Those extras seem more like window dressing for minimal cost, much like the extra leads with a phone or software with a tablet.

I don't know which game they are, though personally, I'd be careful using them personally incase they are from Steam or similar and dump a load of advertising onto your HD.

Reading your latest post, perhaps not. I got the impression you had one but the last edit suggest you don't.

Confused Tunbridge Wells

 

[jabokai]

It's not so much I'm botherewd about the development of the Oculus, but puzzled by what is

Firstly: a major flaw that hasn't been addressed since early prototype to DK1 onward days:

If you inhabit a virtuality, is it not obvious that it helps to know where your limbs, feet hands and fingers are in that world, in order to successfully interact with it, otherwise if you look down at your keyboard or flight stick to type/press buttons, it's not there and neither are your hands/body, which is anti-immersion, ya dig?

This drawback has been solved via a simpler solution - track IR!

Secondly:

When you buy any consumer electronic good, you should not be obliged to buy other stuff with it, you could be duplicating yourself!
The wireless cans, two games and xbox controller should be optional - gaving to pay for them too simply pushes it beyond too many player's pockets.

Yes I will buy the Oculus in time, though I never buy version 1.0 of anything, will wait a couple of years at least for them to appear on the used market.

Another idea is for players to look at the Oculus' rivals.

I've never seen the lack of real world as a flaw personally - it's the essence of virtual reality over augmented reality. Sure, seeing virtual hands in a virtual world would be handy and that is exactly what the Rift and Vive will have with their fancy controllers. I am only one opinion of course, but honestly the camera on the Vive is neither here nor there to me. I've used the Samsung Gear VR and never used the passthrough camera except to see how crap it was! I found it better to pop the HMD on my forehead for a few seconds if needed.

The "simpler solution" Track IR is, frankly, rubbish compared to VR. You talk about immersion and then try to compare that to VR? Lolzalot!

If the extra $40 - $80 (at the very most) for the added value items pushed the Rift out of reach of people then they're probably unlikely to have a PC good enough to run it anyway. In the big picture those items cost Oculus precious little but give the system a really good baseline for developers - they will know that everyone has those earphones and the controller. The headphones are actually a very good idea IMHO given they want to make the device user friendly. One of the annoyances of the current system is putting on the HMD, then the headphones, then reversing that to take off, etc. Having detachable, but sort of built in ones is going to be more palatable for a lot of people. Yeah you can argue option option option until the cows come home but they're probably (rightly so) thinking "user experience" and not putting non-geeks off the first time they use this new tech.

I'm all for Oculus having rivals too. Seeing as I'm getting a Rift for free I'll probably buy the Vive anyway even though it doesn't appeal as much based on what I know so far, and the fact that I think it will be more expensive. And guess what - bundled with things I know I will never use like the 2nd lighthouse. Maybe I should demand they not provide that and knock $20 off the price?