It seems like Oculus and Facebook are finally gearing up to get into the VR market in earnest. I mean sure, they already had their product out and it is one of the best out there, but together, the Rift Headset and the Touch Controllers were enough to leave a huge hole in one’s pocket. Now though, Oculus appears to have decided to make a smaller hole.
The company has reduced the price of its Rift Headset and Touch Controller by $100 apiece. So that means that instead of buying them for $599 (Rift headset) and $199 (Touch Controller) separately — or $798 together — you can now get them both for less than the actual price of the headset along.
Oculus has slashed the price for both the headset and the controller by $100. So the headset now costs $499 while the touch controller costs $99. And as a bit of simple arithmetic yields, together they equal to $598. The company has included its camera sensors into the party as well and they now cost $59 instead of the actual $79. So were you buying them all together, you would probably save somewhere around $220. Not bad at all right?
The price cuts come even as the past couple of weeks have been full of reports about the VR industry. Sure, there are proponents of each and every company out there but it seemed like Sony and HTC were battling it out for the top spot, on the basis of number of headsets sold. Sony for example, announced that it had managed to sell almost 1 million headsets in merely 4 months. While the other companies have refrained from sharing numbers, it is being estimated that Sony and HTC will occupy the first and second spots respectively, leaving Oculus to come up with the third.
It is not that Rift isn’t good. On the contrary, it is one of the best headsets out there. However, people are a bit apprehensive about spending that kind of money upon a gadget that is still relatively new. Meanwhile, the complete VR package from Oculus (including headset, controller and camera) will now cost $618. This is a significant improvement over HTC’s $799 Vive headset. However, Sony’s PS VR still doesn’t need to break a sweat at merely $499.
Agreed, Sony’s headsets are less powerful. However, they appear as the perfect choice for someone just venturing into the field. Let’s hope that Oculus can now compete with them on somewhat more even terms.
