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If you want in on the absolute ground floor of consumer virtual reality (sorry Virtual Boy), you're going to have to pay a very hefty price tag. Oculus VR unveiled their price and release window today and it's not making most fans happy.For $600 (USD), not including shipping, you can get the first generation Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. God help you if you are looking to pay in Euros. This pre-order includes the headset with built-in headphones, a motion tracking sensor, an Xbox One controller, a wireless adapter for the controller, an "Oculus Remote," a copy of Lucky's Tales, and a copy of EVE: Valkyrie.
That cost listed above also doesn't include shipping.
Pre-orders for the earliest adopters start to roll out on March 28 but most are already reporting that their ship date has already slipped to
Don't forget that you'll also need something very close to the following PC hardware to run the Rift and VR enabled games.
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
For comparison, the first and second dev kits for the Rift cost $300 and $350 respectively. But if you have the money, go get 'em tiger!
I wonder if valve will step it down with HTC Vive. They can make it 500$ and still profit a lot with it, just by being a little cheaper they could convince a lot of people to get it instead of the Oculus rift.
Holy jesus... this comes from the company who said they wanted to make as VR affordable as possible, who I believe even said once they would offer virtual reality if they could.
mAn, buying a PC that handles Oculus Rift is cheaper than buying the headset itself!
Edit: The European price is 699€. Not only is the € higher than the US $, our salaries are smaller(at least for portuguese plebs), and your stuff is always cheaper, and you always get the greatest promotions, gee the world is unfair. How do they translate 599$ to 699€? Not to mention the shipping wich is 42€, so in total the oculus rift in europe is nearly around 800$
I imagine the HTC Vive will be upwards of $800 USD. I find over $1,000 USD to be understandable even, depending on how restrictive the market is, regarding people with enough space to use such a thing (while Hover Junkers can be played with you literally standing and crouching without any walking, I doubt people would want to buy this technology to not move around). So the next question is, when will we see people modding the Oculus Rift to work with Kinect to have body angle and positional tracking? I'm guessing it would be done through custom made software injecting into existing VR apps/games (without setting off virus scanners)? We already know Kinect can do motion capturing (and I mean the FIRST generation, so the Xbox One's Kinect is even better in that regard), so I'd like to think people can cheap out by combining the Kinect with the Oculus Rift and pass on the HTC Vive. But that'll take time, and it'll be difficult to setup.
Short answer is, bummer to hear that it's $600 (though Zips is dead-on for assuming this would be over $500), and there is no way the HTC Vive will be cheaper. If it is, I guarantee you HTC and VALVe are selling it at a loss (or rather the gains would be so minimal that they'll take ages to break even), since it's marketed as a premium item. Like a seafood and steak dinner.