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News Oculus VR cuts Rift and Touch bundle price to £598

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 2 Mar 2017.

  1. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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  2. Wakka

    Wakka Yo, eat this, ya?

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    Do enough people really care about VR for the likes of Zuckerberg, HTC, LG, Samsung and Valve to be putting so much investment into it?

    I literally don't know a single person who actually owns a Vive, Oculus or PSVR, and everyone I know who got a VR headset with/for their phone has quickly forgot about it or sold it on for someone else to go "oooh ahhh" for 5 minutes - probably before doing the same.

    Maybe i'm just one of those who "don't get it", but I fear we'll suffer the same thing that happened to movies a few years back when 3D was "the thing" - Games with obvious VR gimmicks thrown in, purely so the developers can slap a "VR Ready!!11!" label on it, that feel out of place and clunky for the majority of us that don't buy into it...
     
  3. Dave Lister

    Dave Lister Minimodder

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    What a piece of luck ! I was going to get the touch controllers in Feb' but had to fork out for new tyres, being forced to wait an extra month will allow me to have a few beer crates with my new touch controllers.
     
  4. thewelshbrummie

    thewelshbrummie Minimodder

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    Unsurprisingly the UK reduction isn't as good as it could be. And £598 inc. VAT isn't fair compared to $598 + Tax.
     
  5. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Yes. Pretty much every video game developers is exited for VR, with the main barrier to them going "screw making yet another F2P game/grey&brownshooter 2017/mobile click-the-thing, its time for VR!" being the small merket making the returns fairly small for now (hence why Sony, Oculus and after dragging their feet Valve and HTC are providing up-front funding to get things started).
    Have you tried a VR HMD? A proper one, not one of the mobile ones, which are either garbage in the case of cardboard, or just below average for Daydream & GearVR.
    $598 = £487. £487 * 1.2 = £584
     
  6. Wakka

    Wakka Yo, eat this, ya?

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    Nope. But at the same time I literally couldn't think of a more un-enjoyable way to game than with something strapped to my head while standing in the middle of a room waving my arms around. It's why I HATE it when someone has the fabulous idea of busting out the Wii, or why i'd rather paint the ceiling than play Rock Band/Guitar Hero (and I really don't like painting ceilings...).

    But as I said before, i'm quite happy to wear the "don't get it" label.:thumb:
     
  7. lacuna

    lacuna Minimodder

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    Yeah, I'm with you and given the dismal PSVR sales it seems that so are a lot of other people.
     
  8. Wwhat

    Wwhat Minimodder

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    In regards to wakka (and Valve's) remarks, I do indeed fear that VR will suddenly die soon, like 3D monitors/TV did.
    And I think it's so silly to not accept that 3D and VR/AR has a number of people that are interested, and you simply will never get a 100% adoption. But manufacturers seem to have the view that either everybody buys it or nobody gets it. It's quite unreasonable. And it's pretty odd too since they invest billions into developing stuff and instead of just accepting a 20% (for instance) market they rather burn down their plants and drown their investment.
     
  9. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Try it before you dismiss it. There are demo stations for the Rift and Vive so you can try without paying for anything (Game also have demo stations for the PSVR, but charge for using them).
    1 million sales isn't too bad at all. that beats out the attach rate for many mainstream games, and already 2% of the PS4 install base.
    "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

    Predicting demand for VR based on current implementations is like predicting LCD will flop vs. CRT because early devices for years were orders of magnitude more expensive and produced a much worse image.
     
  10. SuperHans123

    SuperHans123 Multimodder

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    White elephant
     
  11. Plastic_Manc

    Plastic_Manc Minimodder

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    I'd love just the headset for Assetto Corsa but can't think of many other applications where I'd enjoy it.
     
  12. lacuna

    lacuna Minimodder

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    Indeed, I would personally be very happy if I managed to sell 915,000 of anything, however, the PS4 sold that many in one day, not 4 months. I don't think there is sufficient install base for investors to risk big money developing must have / AAA games. Without these titles the medium isn't going to draw in new customers.
     
  13. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Agree with above, VR is a very long way from mainstream.
     
  14. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Which is why Oculus and Sony (and after dragging their feet a bit, HTC and Valve) are front-loading fundig for development.
     
  15. Wakka

    Wakka Yo, eat this, ya?

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    Even with a load of investment in games, I still don't think it'll catch on. The hardware itself is just too expensive, and the requirements to use it effectively too high.

    I love playing games, but I don't love playing games enough to spend £300-400+ on a (properly) VR capable GPU, plus another £600 on a VR kit, especially when said kit only works on a limited number of games. And that's before you factor in the potential for it all to fall flat on it's face, just like 3D or Eyefinity/Nvidia Surround.

    You can just buy a LOT of non-VR games for that money. Or a beefy GPU and a 4K monitor. Or a holiday.
     

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