The staff at Oculus has been doing a good job of playing their cards close to their chests so far, revealing details about the consumer version of their virtual reality headset bit by bit. At this stage we still don’t have a fixed release date or a final retail price, but company founder Palmer Luckey has dropped another hint about how much you’re going to have to pay to get hold of a headset.
The prototype version of the Oculus Rift that’s already been sent out to developers cost $350, and Luckey was asked at the recent Oculus Connect conference whether the consumer version would be in line with that.
“You know, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you: We’re roughly in that ballpark,” Luckey told Road to VR’s Ben Lang. “But it’s going to cost more than that. And the reason for that is that we’ve added a lot of technology to this thing beyond what existed in the DK1 and DK2 days.”
“We need to put a stake in the ground and say: This is the best possible experience that we were able to make. No compromises were made in terms of quality,” continued Luckey. “Get the cost down as much as you can on that experience, but make it so that the Rift is something that everybody wants to use to the best of your ability.”
If your Oculus Rift savings jar currently holds $350, then you might want to top it off just a bit to get ready for next year — the Rift is scheduled to go on sale to the public in the first few months of 2016.
And while the Oculus Rift might be aiming for the high end of the VR headset market, Luckey thinks there’ll be something to suit every budget once the hardware manufacturers start producing these devices in large volumes. “With all the projects we’re working on and all the partners we’re working on, I’m confident there’s going to be VR existing at multiple quality points and price points,” he adds. “With the Rift, it makes sense to do what nobody else is doing which is invest in making the best possible quality headset.”
