Sony VR Headset/Project Morpheus/PlayStation VR

[Prophecy2k]

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?

This is where I feel they've completely botched any chance for commercial success with the OR now with this price point. I feels so much like too many engineers in the kitchen, fiddling for too long to make the perfect device, only to end up with an over-engineered product that isn't even able to achieve their primary initial goal of it being "affordable"... I mean hasn't that been the whole premise upon which this newly lauded "VR revolution" they've been hyping was predicated from the very beginning?... Tell me what's the point of putting in all this fancy tech if the final product requires you to basically be in the top 10% earning bracket to be afford it?

The way OR is positioned right now its's not even a mass market product anymore (not that it ever really was considering the HW requirements on the PC side). It's a niche of a niche.

And good luck with garnering a large enough installed base to actually make any money on software sales at all, if this thing is really being sold at a loss. This just sounds like a multi-million dollar writedown on FB's balance sheet in the making. Good luck with actually persuading developers to support the platform too when the likelihood is that unless they design their games like iOS/mobile games designed to exploit whales with ridiculous micro transactions, devs simply aren't going to be able to make any money on the OR platform when the cost of entry for the hw is so astronomically high.

I sure hope its easy to port games between Vive, OR and PSVR, for Oculus' sake. Otherwise they may start seeing devs refuse to support the platform outright. Like they did early on with the PS3.

This is a real clusterfunk if I ever witnessed one imho. I really hope Sony doesn't follow suit with similar pricing or VR will be stillborn before its even gotten going.

 

[MrFox]

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."

No, it is literally a simple remote.

 

[Rangers]

OVR price is high but thats PC gaming for you I guess. It's always best of the best with a price tag to match. Also, I constantly remind myself inflation is a thing. Price points that were once not disposable rapidly become so. Even in video cards a good $200 card is no longer a thing like it was when I first got into PC gaming, now it requires $400 or $600 for decent "mid range". Consoles once dipped to $99, now they'll probably end up at $199 if we're lucky.

I dont particularly see how OVR hopes to escape what is the rest of PC gaming though, a quite niche market. A console is much more positioned to take it mass market.

 

[JPT]

But does VR live and die with gaming? I heard good things about watching movies with Gears VR and the Cinema app or what is called.
Can it be used for work or training/education etc

 

[MrFox]

In the console forum, VR lives and dies with gaming. Without a large user base there will be no healthy game business. With a high price and/or extremely limited supply, there will be no user base for investing in game production.

 

[Scott_Arm]

$600 leaves a lot of room for Sony to ship a ton of affordable VR units with quality that is "good enough" vs the absolute best. Sounds like Oculus is selling fast compared to their expectations. They sold out their expected launch quantity in something like 10 mins. But it's obviously a premium product, not mass market. Maybe price will come down over the next year or two. But really, the ball is in Sony's court to take hold of gaming.

 

[MrFox]

They sold out all twelve of them or all four million of them?

Are there any left??!!??!?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

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.

Luckey himself has stated that including the Xbox pad cost them "almost nothing" and I'm sure that is true. Building those controllers must be dirt cheap and MS seems to want it included. It's an added value like the games, but these aren't significant in the POM.


edit: quote from Palmer explaining the costs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3zt7ul/i_am_palmer_luckey_founder_of_oculus_and_designer/

To be perfectly clear, we don’t make money on the Rift. The Xbox controller costs us almost nothing to bundle, and people can easily resell it for profit. A lot of people wish we would sell a bundle without “useless extras” like high-end audio, a carrying case, the bundled games, etc, but those just don’t significantly impact the cost. The core technology in the Rift is the main driver - two built-for-VR OLED displays with very high refresh rate and pixel density, a very precise tracking system, mechanical adjustment systems that must be lightweight, durable, and precise, and cutting-edge optics that are more complex to manufacture than many high end DSLR lenses. 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 - phones that cost $599 cost a fraction of that to make, same with mid-range TVs that cost $599. There are a lot of mainstream devices in that price-range, so as you have said, our failing was in communication, not just price.

 

[Clukos]

$600 leaves a lot of room for Sony to ship a ton of affordable VR units with quality that is "good enough" vs the absolute best. Sounds like Oculus is selling fast compared to their expectations. They sold out their expected launch quantity in something like 10 mins. But it's obviously a premium product, not mass market. Maybe price will come down over the next year or two. But really, the ball is in Sony's court to take hold of gaming.

PSVR features a higher refresh rate display than both Oculus and Vive(120hz vs 90hz), refresh rate being something that directly affects the VR experience. I am now curious to see how they go about pricing it.

 

[cheapchips]

PSVR features a higher refresh rate display than both Oculus and Vive(120hz vs 90hz), refresh rate being something that directly affects the VR experience. I am now curious to see how they go about pricing it.

I'm not sure there's a difference once you get past 90hz? That should be enough to eliminate low persistence flicker for most people. We'll see in the CV1 reviews if its an issue.

I always thought that the PSVR's 120hz was more about being able to time warp upwards from the PS4 1080p 60hz rendering sweet spot. It opens up richer graphics options with a bit of bluryness trade off.

 

[orangpelupa]

If psvr is cheap and sell well. More motivation for hackers to make windows driver?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

OVR price is high but thats PC gaming for you I guess. It's always best of the best with a price tag to match. Also, I constantly remind myself inflation is a thing. Price points that were once not disposable rapidly become so. Even in video cards a good $200 card is no longer a thing like it was when I first got into PC gaming, now it requires $400 or $600 for decent "mid range". Consoles once dipped to $99, now they'll probably end up at $199 if we're lucky.

I dont particularly see how OVR hopes to escape what is the rest of PC gaming though, a quite niche market. A console is much more positioned to take it mass market.

Nonsense. A AMD fury is 650 euro's, that is the upper level of the high end market. A 390x is 420 euros, which is mid high end level and at the low high end level you got the r9 390 for 335 euros which is still more than fast enough to run almost every game at high or ultra settings at 60fps as long as you don't aim for 4k.

Today is as good as a time for midrange cards as ever. As long as you stick to 1080p you can get pretty good performance for your buck, 60fps without dropping the IQ too much isn't that hard for 200 ~ 300 euros.

Anyway I do think the OR price is steep and they didn't help themselves by telling everybody it would be "cheap".

 

[DieH@rd]

I'm not sure there's a difference once you get past 90hz?

According to the Epic engeneer who ported UE4 Showdown demo from Crystal Cove devkit [2 screens, same rez as CK1] to PSVR [without touching any content], he believes 120 gives noticeable difference [especially for native 120hz content]. I posted video of his explanation here before.

 

[goonergaz]

Sorry if already posted - I saw this on GAF;

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...ost-3x-more-popular-than-oculus-rift-in-2016/

Around 3x more PS4s than OR capable PCs (only includes nVidia cards)

and

"Michael Swierczek of Evercore ISI tells me the research firm expects Sony’s PlayStation VR to launch at about $350, and my own sources suggest it won’t release any higher than $499. So, for consumers who want a VR experience on PlayStation, their “all-in” cost shouldn’t exceed $850 in a worst case scenario, which is nearly half the “all-in” cost of an Oculus Rift. "

Also, interesting that their plan is to make money on the software - they do realise PC folk don't like paying much (if anything) for games right?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

edit: quote from Palmer explaining the costs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3zt7ul/i_am_palmer_luckey_founder_of_oculus_and_designer/

See, they changed their model. OVR launched as a cheap VR for the everyman using off the shelf components. They created instead a premium prodouct. There's should be two products: the premium, and a device that matches the original vision. Having generated so much hype for his vision, Mr. Luckey has let his fans down, seems to me.

And again, that's hopefully where Sony have a vision of VR for the masses and stick with it.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

That title alone is a joke.

For arguments sake lets assume AMD makes up for another third so there would roughly be 35% more ps4's than OC capable pc's. However that doesn't take into consideration that OC capable pc owners might be more likely to spend money on a VR headset compared to PS4 owners on the basis that owners of such high end pc's are more likely to be willing to spend money on hardware compared to PS4 owners which will also include a lot of younger people more budget/parent limited where I'm pretty sure the majority of OC capable pc owners have paid for it with their own money.

I do agree that the price of the average game sold to a pc gamer is a lot lower than that of consoles games but this is a double edges sword. If a game is 60 bucks you probably make sure it's a good game. If a game is 20 bucks or whatever people might be more likely to buy it even if they know it's not a AAA title. So it goes both ways.

 

[goonergaz]

That title alone is a joke.

For arguments sake lets assume AMD makes up for another third so there would roughly be 35% more ps4's than OC capable pc's. However that doesn't take into consideration that OC capable pc owners might be more likely to spend money on a VR headset compared to PS4 owners on the basis that owners of such high end pc's are more likely to be willing to spend money on hardware compared to PS4 owners which will also include a lot of younger people more budget/parent limited where I'm pretty sure the majority of OC capable pc owners have paid for it with their own money.

I do agree that the price of the average game sold to a pc gamer is a lot lower than that of consoles games but this is a double edges sword. If a game is 60 bucks you probably make sure it's a good game. If a game is 20 bucks or whatever people might be more likely to buy it even if they know it's not a AAA title. So it goes both ways.

Other than your terrible maths (even with AMD @ 35% we're still talking around double PS4s vs PCs), there's an article within the article stating nVidia is @ 82% of the market....so yeah, over 2x and the gap is growing bigger every day.

 

[chris1515]

I think some PS4 owner wanting to buy a second console (Xbox One or Wii U ) will buy a PSVR.

 

[goonergaz]

I think some PS4 ownee wanting to buy a second console (Xbox One or Wii U ) will buy a PSVR.

This, I was tempted to get the XBO for the odd exclusive but I'd much rather give PSVR a spin.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

See, they changed their model. OVR launched as a cheap VR for the everyman using off the shelf components. They created instead a premium prodouct. There's should be two products: the premium, and a device that matches the original vision. Having generated so much hype for his vision, Mr. Luckey has let his fans down, seems to me.

And again, that's hopefully where Sony have a vision of VR for the masses and stick with it.

I think the original vision of Oculus still lives, but the end result has definitely changed quite a bit. It's true that being affordable was a very key point of it, but I think from early on it was just as much about delivering the best product with as few compromises as possible. Few years ago off the shelf, cheaper and lower quality parts were the best there was, but now they had more options and they chose to uphold the quality while sacrificing the price point. It is a first gen product launching soon, so I do expect cost improvements to occur. It would cost about 750€ for me to get it, and it's too much for me at this point. Maybe I'll wait for the second gen model...

I hope PSVR won't be over €400-450. I could see myself having two different helmets for the different software. I do have faith that both of these products will end up doing well enough.