How can you say the backers got the shaft when they're getting a free consumer Rift?
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Oculus Founder Defends $600 Price Tag
- Thread starter HardOCP News
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How can you say the backers got the shaft when they're getting a free consumer Rift?
andrewaggb
Limp Gawd
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I read the whole post and I felt like his explanation was reasonable enough. I'm sure we'll see a teardown cost analysis soon and see if he's being honest or not. Considering my note 5 was almost $900 CAD and ipads are in the rift range I don't necessarily think it's overpriced. It's more expensive than I was hoping, but if it's a better product for it than I suppose that's ok. I still need a new video card and want to see some reviews, so this is a summertime or fall purchase for me at the soonest.
The whole point behind the dev kits was to start ramping up for the supposed 'AAA' titles to be ready for launch.
You can't pair a $600 device with just a promise of better titles to come and not expect an outrage for the thing.
andrewaggb
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I think backers got a good deal. They got the dev kit they wanted, the project they backed didn't go belly up, it's the real deal now, and they get the final product. Makes me wish I had backed it back then
Your analogy is pretty extreme. More like they promised a Nexus 5x ($379) and delivered a Nexus 6p with extra storage ($650). When I put it that way, it doesn't sound so extreme does it? I mean really, bleeding edge VR headset for less than the price of a fucking Nexus 6P.
But I do agree, they should have done a better job at managing peoples expectations before launch. A lot of people are justifiably disappointed. I almost didn't press that purchase button.
I think backers got a good deal. They got the dev kit they wanted, the project they backed didn't go belly up, it's the real deal now, and they get the final product. Makes me wish I had backed it back then
No shit! I thought about backing it, but decided to just wait for the consumer product since it got funded so fast.
Really wish I backed it now, lol.
They'll be ready. It hasn't actually launched yet, just pre-order..
There's a lot of whining on this board, and from what I can tell, [H] is mostly Gen X and older, so if you're looking for the whining generation, take a look in the mirror, because it's probably yours or mine.
Are you making assumptions or going off of the same Oculus PR that was quoted in 'ballpark $350'?
How can a company entice customers to preorder without this said list. It makes no sense. If one existed it would be out already. All we know of for certain are the two games that will come with it.
Yakk
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I thought so too. Heck for $1,000 I would even include a Special PREMIUM polished riveted chromed faceplate on the viewer with "Oculus TITAN" indented into it for people sitting with you to look at themselves!
I think I may be hanging out with marketing people too much lately...
Admiral Equinox
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I don't think 600 bucks is bad. It's the finalized product. Comes with accessories to ensure that if games are being made for the Oculus Rift, that everyone has the same peripherals.
If you don't want the Xbox controller, sell it. They still fetch a nice dime and are actually solid controllers.
If you don't want the Xbox controller, sell it. They still fetch a nice dime and are actually solid controllers.
In all fairness, reasonable assumption. They're including Eve Valk and Lucky's tale with the rift. AAA developers have been making their own demonstrations, and hints as of late.
We still have almost a full 3 months before the first batch of these things actually ship.
And to answer this question, they sold through them faster than they expected.
Pre-orders are now pushed back to June shipping.
Seems a lot of people disagree with you.
Seventyfive
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I think it's too early to say they priced themselves out or that it will be "niche". It hasn't even shipped so we can't even say VR is in the 1st inning. We are more in the batting practice stage. I think a good example would be flat screen tv's. The first ones were in the high 4 digit low 5 digit range and some weren't even 1080p and now you can get a 4k 48" TV for < $600.
Just because the rift is $599 today doesn't mean it will be $599 forever. In fact it might be $499 by christmas and $299 when they release the CV2.
Preorders are backed up to June at this point so it's not like they are having trouble selling them.
As far as the DK2 stuff, the point was more to show that there's a TON of stuff that's already in development and some of it is AAA like elite dangerous, project cars, asetto corsa, war thunder, etc... So just saying you won't be bored or without content once you beat lucky's tale and EV
Exactly.
This company seems to thrive keeping details from the very people they want to buy the thing.
I've been following this for awhile.
What I know, is that at some point in the past year. Oculus put in an order with a manufacturer for one of the components, 500,000 units. Don't recall who the manufacturer was, or which component exactly.
That substantial enough for you?
To further this point....
Remember how early Apple Watch orders began to get pushed into the later months of launch?
Remember also how it magically seems to be the ONLY Apple product that they haven't released any sales figures for?
Some guy on the internet with no sources who said Oculus put in an order for "a thing", but he doesn't know what it was or who the manufacturer was?
Oh yeah, that's totally substantial enough.
Darunion
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That could be a 1kohm resistor and maybe it uses 30 of them. Price breaks on components make you buy far more than you need just to save money. Cheaper to buy more and throw away what you won't use than to buy smaller batches
And to further this point, this is probably just the first batch shipping in March.
Assumption, yes. But we're talking a lot more than just 50,000 units here.
I'm starting to realize you guys are just butt hurt because you can't afford it.
I don't have the time or the desire to go back digging for that information.
It's a lot of units, and no it wasn't a resistor. It was some sort of custom interface chip for the hdmi port.
Works for me, it would be nice if you had the source but meh.
Sure are a lot (500 to 50,000) of whiny comments about the price.
That's fine, but you can understand(I should hope) why I'm not really willing to assume that means they've sold 500,000 units. Instead of the reply I gave, I could have said exactly what you said but said it was 5,000,000 components...how would anyone judge my comment to be any more or less valid than yours?
Until we get some real numbers on this, we don't know how popular it is...and that's really all you can say about it without delving into wild unfounded speculation.
You've admittedly said you've been making assumptions about this company.
I'm not butthurt that I can't afford it. I can, in fact. I just can't justify paying for it when its use is as limited as it is (knowing what we know currently).
What's odd is your seemingly blind loyalty to this company that has yet to release a product. You're not allowing for a reasonable discussion because of it.
I do want Oculus to succeed. I do want VR to become something that won't get tossed aside like 3D.
I've experienced a tiny amount of VR to know that this has the potential to be big. Oculus seems to be flubbing it and possibly giving it a bad rap.
D
Deleted member 83233
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200x 1K resistors is only around $3 or so. Imagine the price break at 500K of them.
Darunion
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Yup, we will buy rolls of 5k just because it is under $10 even if we only need 50 or so for prototypes
Yes, reasonable assumptions. We know Oculus sold the pre-orders much faster than they expected. Their payment processing site almost crashed. At least one large quantity component order went in to a manufacturer last year. I would say it's pretty safe to say they've probably sold a lot of pre-orders. Exact figures will probably surface at some point.
Blind loyalty, no I wouldn't go that far. But I do firmly believe in the technology. I hope Oculus, HTC, and Samsung all succeed with this. Price for what you're getting at $600 US is fair at launch. I don't have any reason to think Oculus is lying when they say they aren't making money off the hardware.
Oculus themselves mentioned that part of the site crash was due to 'script kiddies' and again, we don't have solid information to suggest that the component ordered accurately reflects how many units may or may not be ready for initial shipment.
Memories of the Apple Watch launch come to mind here. The watch was went on preorder and very soon after it went live, estimates on shipping began to go into the 3 month later mark and we all know that Apple basically had a horrible product launch given that they have been uncharacteristically mum about sales and platform adoption.
It's not enough for them to say that shipments are being pushed that far back to accurately gauge how well it's selling. For all we know they are creating this artificial demand for the thing much like Apple likely was for their watch.
Fair enough, guess we'll just have to wait and see how the thing progresses throughout the year.
I'm really looking forward to it. Had a triple monitor setup I originally spent $1000 on, which I recently sold off. Still hanging on to my 30" dell which cost about the same. So to me, $600 VR is really not that bad (especially if it's as good as I think it will be).
I had the DK2, which I recently sold for a decent price. It was a pretty compelling product. It worked well with games like Elite Dangerous, and Assetto Corsa but was limited by the screen door effect, and field of view. Issues I hear have been resolved with the consumer version.
To succeed, this product needs to be GOOD. Not cheap.
You don't know what a "millennial" is do you? Almost all 30 and 40 year old's are Gen X'ers considering Gen X went into the 80's. You immediately discredit anything you have to say moving forward.
And HIV
Some of it may have to do with the fact that they are still in litigation with Zenimax over the stealing of trade secrets..
Has anyone heard or gotten any update how the lawsuit is going? its been over a year and I have no doubt Zenimax may be seeking an injunction of sales.. The highcost maybe calculated to settle with Zenimax.should they seek that
Seventyfive
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Actually I think you should go back and reread the threads and if you still think I don't know what I'm talking about, you need to improve your reading comprehension.
Someone asked how do I know the people crying are millenials and my comment is that if more than just the millenials are the ones crying, we have a bigger problem in this country than the Oculus Rift. As in, I would hope people 30+ are mature enough to not throw a temper tantrum.
D
Deleted member 83233
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You could party with virtual prostitutes with the OVR for $600 too.
For $1200 you could do both.
For $1,000,000 you could do two chicks at the same time. I figure, if you had a million dollars you could hook that up.