Quake3World

xer0s wrote:Is it really that much money? Same price as a new smart phone...

In the absolute sense, yes, $599 (before taxes by the way) is a lot of money. So much in fact that it's a major factor for a lot of people when considering buying one.

What also doesn't help is earlier statements from Palmer Luckey about the price target and the DK2 costing only $350. People assumed the consumer version would cost a similar price and Oculus failed to clear that up in their PR. Palmer Luckey admitted as much in his Reddit AMA linked earlier in this thread. That is basically where the disappointment from a lot of people comes from: they suddenly cannot afford a desirable piece of technology that they expected to be able to buy before.

Also, with this price Oculus is no longer targeting the mainstream consumer, but only enthusiasts. Oculus has talked about targeting the mainstream consumer before and a VR revolution. You won't get a revolution with a relatively few enthusiast early adopters.

Is the price high in a relative sense? No, it's a fair price. Oculus doesn't have any margin on the price. Lots of phones have huge margins (a $700 iPhone costs like $250 or less to make).

The comparison to a phone isn't entirely fair though. A phone is a device you use daily and carry with you a lot of the time. How much will you actually use a Rift? Not that much I guess. Also, remember that a phone is often included with a phone contract. You still pay for the thing, but the cost is hidden, so people are much quicker to get an expensive phone than shelling out $600 at once for a Rift.

The price will come down... Weirdo...

Lots of poor people in this thread.

Eraser wrote:

xer0s wrote:Is it really that much money? Same price as a new smart phone...

In the absolute sense, yes, $599 (before taxes by the way) is a lot of money. So much in fact that it's a major factor for a lot of people when considering buying one.

What also doesn't help is earlier statements from Palmer Luckey about the price target and the DK2 costing only $350. People assumed the consumer version would cost a similar price and Oculus failed to clear that up in their PR. Palmer Luckey admitted as much in his Reddit AMA linked earlier in this thread. That is basically where the disappointment from a lot of people comes from: they suddenly cannot afford a desirable piece of technology that they expected to be able to buy before.

Also, with this price Oculus is no longer targeting the mainstream consumer, but only enthusiasts. Oculus has talked about targeting the mainstream consumer before and a VR revolution. You won't get a revolution with a relatively few enthusiast early adopters.

Is the price high in a relative sense? No, it's a fair price. Oculus doesn't have any margin on the price. Lots of phones have huge margins (a $700 iPhone costs like $250 or less to make).

The comparison to a phone isn't entirely fair though. A phone is a device you use daily and carry with you a lot of the time. How much will you actually use a Rift? Not that much I guess. Also, remember that a phone is often included with a phone contract. You still pay for the thing, but the cost is hidden, so people are much quicker to get an expensive phone than shelling out $600 at once for a Rift.

Price will come down eventually as long as there's enough demand. They're trying to ensure this by releasing a good product that doesn't make people sick. Mainstream consumers just need to wait a bit longer.

What developers, analysts think of the $600 Oculus Rift price tag

ToxicBug wrote:........... trying to ensure this by releasing a good product that doesn't make people sick...........

Hmm, I never thought of that angle, beta testers being guinea pigs

So rumour would have it that Sony's Morpheus price has been leaked at £550....

Main stream VR is 3 years away, I would say, at these prices (if the Sony one is true as well)

I think this will take off, but not on this platform. I think the Gear concept has legs. In four years time phones will have the engine to game at 4K and at that point whatever MS and Sony will have a unit for £100ish.

Doombrain wrote:I think this will take off, but not on this platform. I think the Gear concept has legs. In four years time phones will have the engine to game at 4K and at that point whatever MS and Sony will have a unit for £100ish.

By that time tech would've moved ahead again. There will always be a lag for mobile devices, they will never catch up

Ok

The amount of energy required to process that much data would create too much heat to dissipate in a phone-sized package. I don't think heat sinks will be efficient enough in 4 years to be able to fit in a headset. Not running at 4k with decent texture resolution. Maybe by then there will be high speed wireless data transfer to offload the work onto a PC...

Samgsung phones over heat using their own 3d headset at the moment and they are not 4k.

Hopefully the Morpheus price was wrong and itll be closer to £300

You people need to look at the logarithmic improvement rate of CPUs.

Gordon Moore himself said there are limits to his law. I'm sure we'll get there, but not in 4 years. And I doubt you want liquid cooling on your face in the mean time.

Maybe, my point is this I doubt they can hold a premium on the price given its just a few screens and a bunch of sensors.

This is why I'm waiting for FTL quantum fusion phones.

Me too.

Thing is, clock speeds haven't been that much increased in recent years but power consumption has been greatly reduced. I guess they're focusing on that much more and will keep improving in that area. If it's more operations per second that you want where heat and power consumption is not an issue, just throw in a few more cores. It's power efficiency that counts now, certainly in mobile SoC's

I ordered 8 of these for the whole family...

...and took out a bank loan to pay for it.

Doombrain wrote:Maybe, my point is this I doubt they can hold a premium on the price given its just a few screens and a bunch of sensors.

Agreed, plus there are a few ways to implement VR on your face, as we have seen. I think the way to go is to use high speed WiFi to offload the heavy lifting to a PC rather than be tethered by a cable. There are advances being made in the field of wireless data transfer which could allow a 4k game to be streamed short-range, maybe even within 4 years.

scared? wrote:I ordered 8 of these for the whole family...

More lies? You just can't stop can you?

Why can't u just be happy for me? Bitter jellusy?...

Doombrain wrote:Maybe, my point is this I doubt they can hold a premium on the price given its just a few screens and a bunch of sensors.

It's a little more complicated than that. VR is highly specialized technology. Unfortunately there are companies who want to score a quick buck and treat it as "just a few screens and a bunch of sensors" and end up flooding the market with cheap, nausea inducing devices.

Oculus said they aren't making any money on the hardware, and I'm inclined to believe them. Of course there:s a lot of R&D costs involved there but I'm sure their bill of materials is significantly higher than that of, say, a smartphone.

Doombrain wrote:You people need to look at the logarithmic improvement rate of CPUs.

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