Oculus says that the cheaper its Rift VR headset is, the better, and hopes that it will one day be completely free.
Right now, the only way to get your hands on an Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset that is taking the gaming world by storm, is to buy a $300 devkit, but when the device eventually hits the consumer market, it may be much cheaper. CEO Brendan Iribe recently spoke to Edge Online about the company’s plans for the device’s consumer launch. “The lower the price point, the wider the audience,” he said, adding “We have all kinds of fantasy ideas. We’d love it to be free one day.”
“How do we get it as close to free as possible? Obviously it won’t be that in the beginning. We’re targeting the $300 price point right now but there’s the potential that it could get much less expensive with a few different relationships and strategies.”
“You can imagine if Microsoft and Sony can go out and subsidize consoles because there’s enough money to be made on software and other areas, then there’s the potential that this, in partnership, could get subsidized,” suggested Iribe, “Let’s say there was some game you played in VR that everybody loved and everybody played and we made $100 a month – or even $10 a month – at some point the hardware’s cheap enough and we’re making enough that we could be giving away the headset.”
But Iribe admits that the company is not quite there yet, and the first step is to get the device into as many hands as possible. “You want everybody to play it and the cheaper it is, the more people are going to go out and buy it. Today it’s a $300 dev kit but we’re thinking about how to get it out to as many people as possible.”
Source: Edge Online
Published: Jul 16, 2013 07:01 am