Oculus Rift Price Bomb Dropped by CEO

The most anticipated gaming hardware of possibly the decade has been flaunted in front of consumers since early development. What hasn’t been so widely shared is the price; which is seemly odd considering how close the release is.

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe dropped the biggest hint, stating that a Rift headset and a computer powerful enough to drive it would cost in the region of $1,500 (£1,000). “We are looking at an ‘all-in’ price, if you have to go out and actually need to buy a new computer and you’re going to buy the Rift … at most you should be in that $1,500 range,” Iribe stated at the Re/code conference.

We know what the specifications are, so what about prices. If we use OverclockersUK for current prices and work out the remaining cost for the headset.

• NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
• Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
• 8GB+ RAM
• Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
• Windows 7 SP1 or newer

A quick price tot up, using the cheapest non-stated products such as the motherboard, comes in at around $900 (£600). This leaves a pretty healthy $600 (£400) for the rift itself. This may come as a shock considering the most recent price estimate in September 2014 was between $200 to $400; does this new price include possible inflation or possibly the hiring out to an external company for product? I guess we will find out in a few months.

I can’t wait for the Oculus Rift now, I recently tried the newest Crescent Bay unit and I was very impressed. What are your thoughts on the pricing? Let us know in the comments.

Thank you to ArsTechnica for providing us with this information.