The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will cost $599, but previous statements from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey indicated the headset would cost "roughly in the $350 ballpark". In a Reddit AMA session this week, Luckey apologized and admitted that his statements on the Rift pricing before this week were handled "poorly".
Palmer said that those statement were based in part on previous pricing estimates for buying a PC that would be bundled with an Oculus Rift, which the company stated would be around $1,500. In his AMA session, Luckey wrote:
"In a September interview, during the Oculus Connect developer conference, I made the infamous "roughly in that $350 ballpark, but it will cost more than that" quote. As an explanation, not an excuse: during that time, many outlets were repeating the "Rift is $1500!" line, and I was frustrated by how many people thought that was the price of the headset itself. My answer was ill-prepared, and mentally, I was contrasting $349 with $1500, not our internal estimate that hovered close to $599 - that is why I said it was in roughly the same ballpark.""Later on, I tried to get across that the Rift would cost more than many expected, in the past two weeks particularly. There are a lot of reasons we did not do a better job of prepping people who already have high end GPUs, legal, financial, competitive, and otherwise, but to be perfectly honest, our biggest failing was assuming we had been clear enough about setting expectations. Another problem is that people looked at the much less advanced technology in DK2 for $350 and assumed the consumer Rift would cost a similar amount, an assumption that myself (and Oculus) did not do a good job of fixing. I apologize."
Pre-orders for the Oculus Rift that are made now will ship in June, after the first batches of the headset that will ship in March and April sold out earlier this week, Besides the headset itself, the shipment box will also include an Xbox One controller, a small Oculus Remote, and two games: Lucky's Tale and EVE: Valkyrie.
Pre-order the Oculus Rift for $599
Source: Reddit
