One of the biggest problems — still — facing virtual reality as a medium is the high (cost) barrier for entry. Along with requiring a reasonably powerful gaming PC to run modern VR games at a high enough frame rate, you also need to spend hundreds of dollars on the hardware itself. With price drops for the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, it’s becoming much more viable.
Along with the Rift headset, motion controllers and sensors, this deal gets you six full games, including: Robo Recall, Lucky’s Tale, Quill, Medium, Dead and Buried, and Toybox.
Along with being much more affordable, $350 is quite a poignant price for the Oculus Rift. It is the price that the Rift DK2 (developer kit) headset was sold at and is the “ballpark figure” that Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey was quoted as saying the Rift would likely launch at. That turned out to be far from the truth, with some fans balking at the $600 it debuted at. Fortunately for those interested in getting into virtual reality today, we’re far from that starting point.
Under Facebook ownership, Oculus’ VR hardware is more affordable than ever and this latest sale makes that even more so. Although $350 isn’t pocket change, it’s a far cry from the headset’s original launch price and is a lot cheaper than its main competitor in the high-end, PC VR space, the HTC Vive.
That’s not to say there isn’t competition for the Rift at its newly lean price point though. While it may have the most affordable top-tier VR offering on PC, the PlayStation VR headset has been discounted to $200 as part of the Gran Turismo Sport hardware bundle. It includes the PSVR headset itself, a PS Camera and a copy of the game that gives the bundle its title.
Grab one of the bundles now at Best Buy or GameStop.
As RoadToVR points out, it is for the older version of the headset without upgrades like integrated audio, but it’s certainly the most affordable way to game in virtual reality outside of the mobile-targeted headsets like the Gear VR.
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