251–260 of 395 posts
In a world where hard core gamers will pay >$500 for a graphics card, this price will work fine for a 1st gen. It'll be a smaller audience at first but that will also help them out as they need to focus on their customer support for issues they find in the wild.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, as an addendum to my other comment, I think a more accurate metaphor would be like buying a Tesla S. You have to have a house that you can add a charging station to, in order to buy it, which most people don't have.
Most of the addressable market willing to pay $80k for a car do already own a house...
$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut at, but right now, Oculus faces a much bigger risk than low sales volume: Poor reception. If this was the MSRP required to ensure a comfortable, nausea-free experience, it's far better to have a killer product at a high price point than a "don't buy the first generation" product at the price point people were expecting. The former can lead to a cheaper gen 2, but t…
Well, the $599 price is close to double their "ballpark price" of $350. It also comes just days after they announced they're giving away ~7,000 free Rift units as a special thank-you to those who Kickstarted the devkits. Right now they have a serious expectation management problem with their price - they're turning off customers because they nearly doubled their asking price overnight. Those free units would translat…
I doubt it. Initial runs are always more expensive because you're paying for the initial tooling and investment, not necessarily because of the actual raw price of the unit. Depending on minimum size commitments and the like with the manufacturers, the 7k "free" units may even be netting a discount on the remaining unit costs.
All I want for christmas is a Portal 3 and a VR headset for Linux (that actually is using a standrad like VGA was)... ;)
I'd love to hear about other Linux users' experience with a consumer unit though. I'm really excited about VR and would love to pick up a headset at some point soon.
I hope Oculus start to focus on Linux support again soon!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that price (and this being a high one) could just as easily lead to ruin. The quality of a user's experience with the Oculus is going to be directly correlated to the quantity and quality of games/experiences available for the device. Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours there's a problem. Quantity/quality are even mor…
Oculus claims that the point of the Facebook acquisition was that they'd have infinity money. As both Oculus and Facebook assert that there's a blank check there, one would hope they've already also heavily invested in a high-quality software library. If not, they need to quickly start doing so. They could start a developer program where devs qualify for free or discounted hardware. They could even start their own ga…
$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut at, but right now, Oculus faces a much bigger risk than low sales volume: Poor reception. If this was the MSRP required to ensure a comfortable, nausea-free experience, it's far better to have a killer product at a high price point than a "don't buy the first generation" product at the price point people were expecting. The former can lead to a cheaper gen 2, but t…
My thoughts as well. Plus the price is roughly comparable to a higher end smartphone. Given the hardware and software involved, it's not terribly far off for a gen 1 device. I think of the Palm and WinMo phones I paid $500+ for during the early generations of smartphones and it starts to make more sense. And just as I'm sure those devices from Palm and HTC could've been a lot nicer even with the tech of the day, the…
This is what I imagine will be the most common outcome here. Sure the Rift is 'only' $600, but you need a $400 video card to make it work on top of a decent rig, so a minimum $1500 investment?
Meanwhile, millions of kids with Xboxes and PS4's already have everything they need for a perhaps lesser experience, but come xmas that $299 console headset is going to be crazy attractive. The hands on reviews I've read with Morpheus compared it to a later model Rift. No idea how it stacks to this new consumer model, but if Sony can sell that level of resolution and performance on consoles, then its going to hurt Oculus severely. As someone who owns both I'm leaning on wating for the consoles to ante up. I think the PC end of VR is going to be a lot of half assed indie games, non-VR games tied to some crappy driver that makes them 'VR' but with a very poor experience, general steam shovelware/paid beta's, and demos masquerading as "games" while the consoles will only allow polished AAA products on their VR platform.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that there have been plenty of quality indie titles but I think the 3D / recreating reality aspects of VR are somewhat limiting here. 2D games (some of my favorite recent indies) are out of the question in VR. A major goal of VR is to recreate reality or some "reality", which requires well designed 3D models and animations. That being said I think there will be great indie experiences available, but they'll a…
I don't think that even AAA level models are good enough for VR. They have the "uncanny valley" effect -- they're close enough to looking good that they just creep you out and throw of that "presence" feel you're looking for. I think it's going to be a long time before you see human faces in VR. So everybody, even the AAA guys, are going to be putting you into environments like cartoons, space and buildings rather th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They give you a validation tool and link to the documentation where they spell out the specs explicitly.
As I said, I don't see a documentation link with specs anywhere, can you link us to it? Are you talking about this docs site: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation ? Because I don't see any hardware specs on there either. Are you saying I have to run the validation tool (.exe) to get it?
$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut at, but right now, Oculus faces a much bigger risk than low sales volume: Poor reception. If this was the MSRP required to ensure a comfortable, nausea-free experience, it's far better to have a killer product at a high price point than a "don't buy the first generation" product at the price point people were expecting. The former can lead to a cheaper gen 2, but t…
I'm very interested to try Oculus, but not until the price is around other gaming accessories (i.e. south of 200€). Unless someone comes out with game or app that completely revolutionalizes the way we use computers I'm not forking over 750€ for a fad
Earlier quoted context omitted.
wasn't this Google's strategy with glass?
I'd say you're getting a lot more at a much cheaper price with Occulus Rift than you did with Glass. I think the point is charge more if that's what it takes to create a good experience. Google charged a lot more and the experience was awful. I used it for 1 week and to me Glass seemed like something that was a year or two from being ready for release. The extra expense didn't get you a killer experience.