Oculus slashes at reduced prices
Good news on the RV front, but very little of it comes from Oculus. Sony announced that it was closing on a million VR headphones sold since the launch. Sony has transferred 915,000 VR units to date, although we have not seen many new VR games launch for the platform (although Resident Evil 7 is a notable exception).
Oculus has been busy putting his touch controllers on the market, working on a new stand-alone headset that does not require tethering, and working with developers on new Oculus VR compatible games. Despite the company's early position as an industry leader, the past year has seen much of Oculus' pole position flowing, undermined by launch problems, lack of tactile controllers (Which HTC has had), Vive susue) and consumer blowback on the use of DRM Oculus. Palmer Luckey himself came under heavy fire for previous promises to foster an open VR ecosystem followed by attempts to lock the content at the Oculus store.
Oculus’ new VR discounts work as follows: The Rift + Touch controllers are now $598 (down from $798). If you already own a Rift but need Touch, you’ll only pay $100 for the hardware, down from the $200 launch price. If you’re just buying a Rift, it now costs $500, down from $600. If you only need an additional Rift sensor, that’s just $59.
Offering distinct price reductions on individual components encourages users to stack them together for maximum savings but it also makes the entry price of PC VR just a little lower than before. Combine that with some of the $ 500 VR PC kits we've seen, and the price of a Rift + system is now just over $ 1,000.
Oculus has been busy putting his touch controllers on the market, working on a new stand-alone headset that does not require tethering, and working with developers on new Oculus VR compatible games. Despite the company's early position as an industry leader, the past year has seen much of Oculus' pole position flowing, undermined by launch problems, lack of tactile controllers (Which HTC has had), Vive susue) and consumer blowback on the use of DRM Oculus. Palmer Luckey himself came under heavy fire for previous promises to foster an open VR ecosystem followed by attempts to lock the content at the Oculus store.
Oculus’ new VR discounts work as follows: The Rift + Touch controllers are now $598 (down from $798). If you already own a Rift but need Touch, you’ll only pay $100 for the hardware, down from the $200 launch price. If you’re just buying a Rift, it now costs $500, down from $600. If you only need an additional Rift sensor, that’s just $59.
Offering distinct price reductions on individual components encourages users to stack them together for maximum savings but it also makes the entry price of PC VR just a little lower than before. Combine that with some of the $ 500 VR PC kits we've seen, and the price of a Rift + system is now just over $ 1,000.
The bad news, of course, is while HTC and Oculus both grew proportionally, they started from very different market positions. Assume, for a moment, that Steam had exactly one million users. In September 2016, that would mean there were 900 Oculus users and 1900 Vive users. By February, there are 1100 Oculus users and 2300 Vive users.
Both companies grew, but the absolute difference in their install bases got larger at the same time. In September, that hypothetical gap was 1000 users. In February, it would be 1200 users. When attempting to bootstrap an entirely new method of playing games, every user counts, and HTC is racking them up faster than Oculus.
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