The Oculus Rift VR headset is coming in at more than the original price target of $350 when it launches early next year. Company founder Palmer Luckey confirmed the price rise in an interview with RoadtoVR, and attempted to explain why it had to happen.
”You know, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. We’re roughly in that ballpark… but it’s going to cost more than that ($350),” said Luckey, ”and the reason for that is that we’ve added a lot of technology to this thing beyond what existed in the DK1 and DK2 days.”
Luckey said that some trade-offs when it came to unit price were unavoidable if Oculus wanted to maintain quality. As the flagship hardware launch of VR technology, the Rift needs to be a quality piece of kit.
”We need to put a stake in the ground and say: this is the best possible experience that we were able to make,” he explained. ”No compromises were made in terms of quality’. Get the cost down as much as you can on that experience, but make it so that the Rift is something that everybody wants to use to the best of your ability.”
He didn’t confirm what the actual price would be, but Luckey promises that when it launches in Q1 2016, the Oculus will be well whatever that price turns out to be.
