Some people got a bit of a shock last week when Oculus announced that the Rift headset would cost $599 at launch. Considering the powerful hardware that you’ll need to run games at an acceptable frame rate and resolution for virtual reality, the entire cost for a VR-capable rig with an Oculus headset is easily north of $1,500.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey doesn’t believe that the price of the Rift itself is the most significant barrier to high-end VR gaming. Instead, in a Reddit AMA Luckey stated that “your crappy PC is the biggest barrier to adoption”, and that will only change as more and more consumers start purchasing high-performance hardware.
Luckey hopes that in the future, a “normal” PC will be good enough to run VR games, which would then enable “the majority of people will be able to buy a relatively cheap headset and just use whatever computer they already own to drive it.” The best way to achieve this is to increase demand for high-end hardware, which will cause prices to drop and the rate of innovation to increase.
