The Oculus Rift Controversy

Hey Guys, most of you probably know or know of what the Oculus Rift is by now. It demonstrated that virtual reality games have a lot of potential. Imagine being able to play horror games on that thing! The Oculus Rift has a lot of promise. However, there is no way in hell that anybody would want to pay $600 for this.

I'll bring up both sides of the controversy. I can't just be biased throughout this article because there is a lot more going behind the scenes than we know. I'm not kidding. People will hate on the Oculus Rift's developers without knowing what they are getting mad about.

I'm going to be using this thread started by Palmer Luckey, the founder of the Oculus Rift, from Reddit. Please, I'm only going to go over his noteworthy responses and give my thoughts afterwards. You can check out the original thread by clicking on that blue "Reddit" link.

This is going to be formatted a little strangely because Luckey is answering multiple questions in one post. Just bear with me here. Additionally, try to ignore that stupid white highlighter thing because Blogger just loves screwing with "copy-paste" material.

• So Reddit user codisms asked, "why was the messaging about price so poor? $599 is not in the ballpark of $350"
• Luckey then first responds with "I handled the messaging poorly". Let me explain why this single line is more important than it looks likes. He knew the Rift and the recommended PC specs combined would be about $1500. Luckey admitted that he knew that he wasn't sure about the price he first targeted. He even apologizes later in the article. 
• Here's where things really take a dark turn. "To be perfectly clear, we don’t make money on the Rift". It probably costs about $599 just to make one of these Oculus Rifts. It's understandable for this thing to cost $599. However, this is where I almost laughed out of my seat. "It is expensive, but for the $599 you spend, you get a lot more than spending $599 on pretty much any other consumer electronics devices". He even brought up examples to a phone and mid-range TVs. I could get a screen that that is bigger than the Oculus Rift and has internet functionality for probably less than $599.

Okay, now on to my thoughts. There really isn't much I can go by other than what the man said. I guess the fact that he mentioned there should be at least 100 games out for it this year is cool. 

Remember when the PlayStation 3 was first announced? Yeah, who could forget that $600 price tag. Now, we have a company wanting the same amount of money for a virtual reality headset on top of the monster of a PC required to run it.

Let me make it clear. If you don't have a beast of a PC, you're not going to be able to use the Oculus Rift correctly. This means you have to pay almost a grand just to even use this headset if you don't have the PC to use it.

At the same time, I have to give the Oculus Rift some slack because of what it's capable of and that there is no profit being made. This thing is not worth $599. I would probably pay $300 max for this thing. 

I'll have fun with the TV that I have. I really have no interest in getting one of these things even with a price drop. Really, I believe that the price is what will scare most consumers away. 

But hey, with a small loan of one million dollars you could easily get one of these even if you are interested in it.

Till Next Time!!