Oh! Damn. Fell for that one.
Sony VR Headset/Project Morpheus/PlayStation VR
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Deleted member 11852
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It's amusing like @JonyIveParody. In small doses anyway.
Real Kaz briefly showcased fake Kaz's twitter account today on CES. 
https://twitter.com/KazHiraiCEO/status/684545191215235072
https://twitter.com/KazHiraiCEO/status/684545191215235072
Agreed. I really don't know how they came to this price after they said they are not aiming to make profit from it.
It does seem to ship with a motion controller. The Oculus remote seems similar to a Move controller in functionality and according to Oculus can be used for games: "With Remote, you can easily browse the Oculus store, explore 360 video content in Oculus Video, or experience a wide range of VR games and entertainment."
They do seem committed to that. The launch blog specifically states February availability of the PC bundles: "Bundles that include an Oculus Ready PC and a Rift will be available for pre-order in February starting at $1499" $800 for a 970 powered PC should be just about doable.
https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/oculus-rift-pre-orders-now-open-first-shipments-march-28/
It sold out in 14 minutes so demand is clearly vastly outstripping supply at this point. So hard to call the price point a fuck up under those circumstances. If we start seeing surplus stock moving forwards then it will be a different story.
Luckey is still claiming it's being sold at a loss:
https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/684809421675872256
https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/684490329332957184
In terms of how this compares to PSVR, I don't see reason to be too concerned. Oculus is shipping with higher resolution screens which I assume adds some price, it bundles 2 games, a very expensive wireless control pad and motion controller. As far as I'm aware PSVR will bundle none of that so can presumably afford to sell for much less.
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Facebook's investors must be pressuring really hard for the company to start showing an actual revenue from retail.
Ok that was scary
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Because they want to recoup as much of the costs of already sunk costs of R&D to date. If every product was costed representative only of the materials build with a small margin for actual profit, and not the cost of actually running the company while it was not generating revenue to cover running costs, then no company would invest in R&D because it would always be a sunk cost.
Just because your company has money or, as is the case here, your parent company has lots of money, that's no reason throw basic finance principles out of the window because Facebook has shareholders who want their operations not to generate losses. VR is a gamble and not a sure thing so throwing money at it no guarantee of a return.
Plus, like I said above, they know that there will be people will pay a premium to get it early. Why sell something at $400 if a lot of people will pay $600? Sell it at the higher price then lower the price when sales dry up.
Capitalism 101. You're welcome!
£500 OVR but they want to make money on the hardware. PSVR could go for cost (altough throwing potential profits away) as Sony make software sales, and if they become the de facto VR machine (£500-600 complete VR console bundle next year), that could be huge. I'm not sure business savvy would make such a call though, and Sony would rather price high for early adopters and reduice as the market readjusts. Although that could be bad for VR. It needs critical mass or devs will spend as much on supporting it as they do current 3DTVs...
Actually, that's a serious concern. OVR has been riding a wave of hype because it was going to work and be cheap. The original idea was a cheap solution uses crappy lenses and adjusting for them in digital image processing, which was very clever. The price undermines this and now a lot of folk are going to wait, and VR just can't afford that if it's to have a real crack. But with such a price, Sony may well feel tempted to keep their price high.
Ultimately I hope Sony have their gameplan for supporting VR properly, meanign a decent install base, meaning a low price of entry, or else the VR wave will take a massive beating IMO.
Then again, maybe that'd be best for humanity...?
Ultimately I hope Sony have their gameplan for supporting VR properly, meanign a decent install base, meaning a low price of entry, or else the VR wave will take a massive beating IMO.
Then again, maybe that'd be best for humanity...?
But Luckey has already said they're selling at a loss. In fact he's specifically said, selling more units at a lower price would mean a bigger loss, so that loss isn't including R&D:
https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/684810336097058816
Obviously he could be lying or just not understand the actual finances of the situation but at the moment it's pretty much the only solid information we've got on how much profit they're making per unit.
Not sure how much of a loss, their revenue streams should be limited unlike Sony who can make profits back on software sales and services. I'm guessing PSVR would be cheaper for those reasons alone.
Previous rift prototypes were using off-the-shelf parts and even the screen was a galaxy phone replacement part. It had some major changes since DK2. It's a complete redesign. They significantly improved the eye relief and exit pupil, which is very difficult without having super heavy, bulky lenses. They need a different lens technology.
They did say they were using a "very fine fresnel" which could mean a phase fresnel (nano structure similar to holographic grating), or very fine glass fresnel (very expensive to ground optical glass, really shitty light scattering), or something else. Nikon lenses using phase fresnel elements are above $1000. Canon's similar DO optics are equally expensive.
The optics problems seemed to have been solved by Sony before they unveiled their first public prototype with significant eye relief and exit pupil, we didn't see any of their prototypes before that. We still don't know what they use! It does't seem to be fresnel-like (which is reported to create a "linen effect" on oculus and vive). For all we know it could even be just a brute force big block of acrylic with AR coating, but this would show up in the weight, and it doesn't.
I maintain that this is the biggest wild card on the BOM, and it's very possible Facebook learned this the hard way when they tried to produce a million custom ground glass fresnel, or diffractive optics, or phase fresnel, or whatever exotic lens technology they decided to use.
They did say they were using a "very fine fresnel" which could mean a phase fresnel (nano structure similar to holographic grating), or very fine glass fresnel (very expensive to ground optical glass, really shitty light scattering), or something else. Nikon lenses using phase fresnel elements are above $1000. Canon's similar DO optics are equally expensive.
The optics problems seemed to have been solved by Sony before they unveiled their first public prototype with significant eye relief and exit pupil, we didn't see any of their prototypes before that. We still don't know what they use! It does't seem to be fresnel-like (which is reported to create a "linen effect" on oculus and vive). For all we know it could even be just a brute force big block of acrylic with AR coating, but this would show up in the weight, and it doesn't.
I maintain that this is the biggest wild card on the BOM, and it's very possible Facebook learned this the hard way when they tried to produce a million custom ground glass fresnel, or diffractive optics, or phase fresnel, or whatever exotic lens technology they decided to use.
What's their business model then? Make and sell hardware at a loss until Facebook stops pouring money in? I suppose conceptually FB may be happy to subsidise VR hardware to gain the controlling stake in a VR social future.
If they're really selling at a loss at $600, then they seriously need to optimise their production, and very fast. Personally I doubt they are, that Luckey sounds like a complete twat who doesn't instil a lot of confidence into how much he knows about the business.
What adds way more price than slight PPI difference is that they are using two screens and not one like PSVR. But still, that's nowhere near close enough of raising the price as high as this SKU costs.
They want to create a Oculus Store where they will take 30% from each software sale, and down the line, utilise Facebook integration as the way of earning money.
With their early target audience almost all being PC gamers [with lots of disposable income for purchase of high-end gear] who are all using Steam, I don't know how will that move of promoting Oculus Store play in the reality. Will those users be ready to move to another storefront?
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They pulled it with Microsoft by announcing a more powerful console FOR THE PLAYERS at a cheaper price. If they pull it with VR by announcing a surprise low price and go full force marketing they might make the PS4 the Wii of the VR in terms of adoption and success.
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