For all those dooming VR for its price tag...

anyone who dooms a new product to failure due to initial high price imo is making a mistake.

VR *may* fail (I do not think it will) but if it does it wont be due to price.

as of connect the official price of entry for an oculus rift PC has almost halved since the start of the year, and Sony with PSVR have equally lowered the price of VR entry.

much like all things tech related, 2 years from now entry level VR will be low end gaming PCs. 5 years from now my mobile phone will probably trade blows with my current games rig.

I remember when 40 inch plasma TVs were £20K, when video recorders were things most people had to rent rather than buy, and when CD players cost £800

And when we had marathons not bloody snicker bars :neutral:

What's wrong with the price tag? You've got PSVR to Rift/Vive.  And this isn't Virtual Boy - the tech is actually really compelling finally.  I remember the Neo Geo at $600 with $200 games!  The tech is actually worth the price of admission this time because its revolutionary, and you have different tiers for entry.  VR is here to stay!

The vr pricing has been in line with new technology without a doubt

I've no problem with the cost. Mobile, even with a phone's superior resolution, can't compete with high-end VR. And I'm willing to pay the extra for quality.

inovator said:

The vr pricing has been in line with new technology without a doubt

Price seemed about right to me too.  About the price of a nice monitor, less than a nice video card, less than a nice PC, a lot less than a new phone

Yeah, I mean any kind of expensive electronics like this is going to be a luxury that many can't afford (or justify spending what they have on)  but in comparison to any kind of high-end display device or high-end gaming peripheral, there's nothing shocking about this price.. and VR systems are both display devices AND gaming peripherals.

Like, heck, I spent $800 on an HD projector once, and that was back when I was in a far less favorable financial position than now.  Totally worth it, to watch stuff in 1080p on a ~100"  'screen', although nowadays I only plug it in when friends come over. :smile:

If I get two years use out of it, at anywhere near the the usage I have now, it will prove to be a very cost effective form of entertainment. 

If you want vr u can see the starting price is fair. If you just want to be a very casual and infrequent user, it would be expensive.That type of user should buy gear vr or something similar.

As I wrote many times before - it's not binary (1=low price = OK and 0= price too high=VR fail).
For a good quality VR people will pay. Even poor people buy smartphones expensive as f..k just because they really want them. People in my country have to multiply the prices by 5x (or even 10x if their home budget is already though) (if you consider amount of time spent on work in order to earn enough to buy) if they are going to buy gaming hardware and yet, when GTX970 showed up, it quickly became the most popular purchase on most PC gaming forums. Imagine GTX970 costing 1900$. Most would say "noone will buy this" but people who really want things, will find a way to buy them. Unless they're casuals. ;)

bigmike20vt said:

much like all things tech related, 2 years from now entry level VR will be low end gaming PCs. 5 years from now my mobile phone will probably trade blows with my current games rig.

As a person who frequently gets disappointed because technology isn't improving as much as I hoped for, I feel oblidged to help you avoid this trap:

Phone (chip) technology progress has slowed down and will slow down even more, since we already have chips inside smartphones, which could work much, much faster, but cannot due to the thermal and battery issues.
I don't think it'll be 5 years, but rather 10 or more. Unless some huge change comes in to the rescue.

The level of VR games, aside from traditional games bumped up to be VR, could be a whole different story.
I mean: it's so bad now, focused on so weak PCs, that it's possible that similar looking VR will be available for phones 5 years from now. PCs didn't even officially get all the most important optimizations, ATW isn't official yet, low level APIs aren't the only focus yet, developers didn't learn to squeeze maximum performance (coding quality) etc.
But technology-wise - it's impossible that phone CPUs will reach single-threaded performance of your PC, unless you game on something way below recommended i5+970, but I think you don't.)
2013 consoles didn't reach 2008 level of CPU performance.
Phones will get some specs of today's PCs (peak GLOPS etc.) but not all the major things.