Palmer admits it could have been $200 cheaper!

[bbagnall]

I'm starting to see why Oculus wasn't as hungry at cost reducing the Rift as they should have been. From yesterday's Reddit AMA:

The unfortunate reality we discovered is that making a VR product good enough to deliver presence and eliminate discomfort was not really feasible at the lower prices of earlier dev kits that used mostly off the shelf hardware.
We could have released a lower quality product and saved one or two hundred bucks, but the all-in cost for the average consumer (including PC) would not have budged significantly. To address a later post, mums and dads would be paying in the $1300 to $1500 range regardless.
DK1 and DK2 cost a lot less - they used mostly off the shelf components. They also had significantly fewer features (back of head tracking, headphones, mic, removal facial interfaces, etc.) For Rift, we’re using largely custom VR technology (eg. custom displays designed for VR) to push the experience well beyond DK2 to the Crescent Bay level.

Okay, some of that is probably legit and some of that is BS. Let's start with the legit:
- the new CV1 displays cost more
Now the BS:
- How much more could the cost of the new displays add? I'm guessing these newer displays probably double the display cost, whatever that was to begin with. Anyone have a guess what displays cost?
- The increased volumes for CV1 vs the DK's will result in massive savings when it comes time for production, provided they can sell a lot of them.
- No one asked for feature creep.
- We already have our PCs and will be using said PC's for a lot more than Oculus VR! Gaming, browsing the web, productive work. Just like I can't lump in the cost of my home because I play VR in it, I also can't lump in the cost of a PC because I use it for VR.

To manage damage control they concocted this whole elaborate fantasy of "A new PC rig with a nice card costs a thousand dollars, therefore it is the biggest cost, therefore if we shave $200 off we're not really saving much of the overall cost for you." I'm getting sick of hearing that line of BS to justify the insane cost of the headset. Somewhere along the line Palmer and gang started believing this little bit of PR, and once that is accepted then what's the point of cost reducing Oculus Rift because it's bound to pale next to the price of a new gaming rig. WRONG! They should be sweating every dime extra that something costs in the headset. This is exactly why Oculus was suddenly not hungry to cost reduce the headset. Big mistake in their way of thinking and it will push VR from mass acceptance to niche.

[Leonard_Powers]

Your title is more than misleading:

"Palmer admits it could have been $200 cheaper!"
should say
"For less, you could have a worse Product/Experience"

If that is what you are after, then please buy an OSVR HMD.

[idividebyzero]

The lenses could have pushed the price up significantly, genuinely good lenses are extremely difficult and costly to make as they require specialty factories that know what they are doing instead of some rando factory in China.

But I think the case and headphones had a pretty major impact on the price, Ive had to choose packaging options before and the luxurious packaging CV1 is getting isnt anywhere remotely as cheap as people think it is (its not like they are ordering them in millions either). That type of packaging is almost never included as standard due to it having such a major affect on the price without adding much value to the general public, its usually reserved for limited run special editions for people willing to spend top dollar or top of the line luxury items that have giant margins. I was shocked to see such a case come standard on what was supposed to be a mainstream consumer product, those things are not insignificant costs at all. If they got rid of all the extras and just shipped the Rift+camera in a cheap box then theyd probably be able shave around $100 off the price.

[jyoun]

"bbagnall" wrote:
Have you ever seen a company charge less for a developer kit?

Well, Vive gave theirs away for free... so does that mean they should be paying us money to get the final product? 😛

[Twitchmonkey]

"Hadtstec" wrote:
Your title is more than misleading:

"Palmer admits it could have been $200 cheaper!"
should say
"For less, you could have a worse Product/Experience"

If that is what you are after, then please buy an OSVR HMD.

The problem with that is no one is going to develop for OSVR regardless. If the Rift was $200 cheaper, even if it was an inferior product, it would sell more initial units, thus making it worthwhile to develop for. The experience on the Rift is going to be great I'm sure, but it's also going to be a brick for long periods of time while you wait for software to slowly trickle in post launch, and most of that will likely be tech demos by devs looking to test the waters, not committed AAA VR titles, there just isn't going to be the audience to justify the development costs.

[densohax]

How about that.

Sell a CV version, with no audio, no controller, no useless remote control (seriously WTF who cares about this shit), no bundled games, no fancy case, no fancy fabric. Just a beautiful and smart plastic design. Yup, it would eassentially be an augmented DK2, but would be releasable and not look too shitty (there's NO baseline in this market, nobody released yet, you have the time to iterate this headset into something beautiful).

You save on shipping weight first of all, it comes cheaper, you sell a lot, everyone is happy.

Iterate over this version with revision, but do it in months, not years.

If it's well designed, you can make it modular and add say, the audio feature for rev2, etc..

You see the headset at 450$. I don't see this as a deal breaker, however 600$ is. I talked with some people, and the general idea, they won't buy the rift and the gaming business where they work won't either..

Anyways, my general feeling.

However, a wireless HMD makes more sense in the end, and I see why Carmack is in mobile.

[DerekSpeare]

I personally am not interested in a fancy case, headphone, some controller and two games I won't use. How much of the price is affected by this? I suppose it's a "whatever", though...you get everything or nothing. :roll:

[Anonymous]

What BS...the case, the unnecessary headphones, gamepad and two games are what drove the price up. Theres no way in hell those items came "free".

Remove them and we will get that 200 less easy and the Rift itself will still be of the same quality.