Over the holiday break, while kids everywhere were opening up new consoles and games, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey gave a bag of coal to anyone looking forward to virtual reality (VR). Luckey announced that the anticipated Oculus Rift VR headset will be sold for $599, which is about $250 more than an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 console bundle. Many expected a lower price point for the upcoming VR headset that would be more in line with the price of a new console, but Luckey surprised most industry professionals with this unforeseen price point.
“If something’s even $600, it doesn’t matter how good it is, how great of an experience it is — if they (gamers) just can’t afford it, then it really might as well not exist," Luckey said in a 2013 interview.
Granted, the Rift will come with an Xbox One controller and two games, but you will need a pretty high-end and expensive PC to use it, not to mention what it will take to run with the highest specs possible.
Despite the somber news of the premium price, there are a few other VR headsets coming within the next year that may offer some sort of hope for those wanting to venture into the future of gaming. HTC and Valve have yet to give a price point for the HTC Vive. Samsung is selling Gear VR for under $100, although it is little more than a headset for the Galaxy line of phones. The Microsoft HoloLens, which is more augmented reality than true VR, will start shipping Development Editions this year for $3,000.
However, perhaps the most intriguing headset, and the one with the best chance of breaking into the mainstream, is Sony’s PlayStation VR. Although Luckey has criticized Sony’s headset for not being as high-end as the Oculus Rift and said that the PlayStation 4 is not nearly as powerful, many are hopeful that the PlayStation VR will make a premium, but affordable, VR headset for console games.
“I could see it being more than $300 ... because at that point you’re spending as much as the console is worth now. I think $299 is the sweet point,” Colin Moriarty of Kinda Funny Games said in October.
However, one day after the Rift price was released, Amazon Canada listed PlayStation VR for what is equivalent to about $800 USD. Sony has said that it was an error and that the price point has not yet been announced, and the release date looked to be a placeholder, but after such recent news, perhaps there is more than meets the eye to the leak.
So, what does this all mean for gaming?
Well, VR has been infamously hard to demo without trying it yourself, and with the news of a higher price point than many were expecting, VR will likely become more niche than even it originally was going to be. But don’t fret, Geoffrey Morrison of CNET offers some sort of good news.
“The Rift won't always be $600. The next generation will be cheaper and better. Don't forget, the first DVD and Blu-ray players were $1,000," Morrison said. "The first flat-panel TVs were $15,000. In all of those cases and most others, the first generation was the worst of that product type. They got better — and cheaper. In all cases, with great rapidity.”
VR is certainly the future of gaming, and most likely will be used beyond that in ways that we have yet to even discover. All this news really means is that the future, for most people, is just a little further away than initially thought.