Oculus CEO: Consumer Rift and a suitable PC will cost about $1,500

Company will discuss its own VR control solution at E3 next month.

Kyle Orland – May 27, 2015 7:13 pm | 80

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe. Credit: Oculus VR

As Oculus nears its recently announced “Q1 2016” launch of the consumer version of its Oculus Rift headset, the company has remained tight-lipped about specifically how much it will charge for the hardware. Today, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe gave the biggest hint yet of that price: a complete Rift system, including a computer that can power the experience, should cost about $1,500.

“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 said during an interview at the Re/code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

That number may seem less than useful for users who already have a high-powered gaming rig, but we can start to hazard some guesses at the price of the headset alone. That’s because, earlier this month, Oculus announced the recommended minimum hardware specs for a PC tower that can power the upcoming consumer headset.

Our back-of-the-envelope math suggested a bare bones price of at least $900 to build a PC with those specs, not including a license for a copy of Windows (Mac and Linux support has been “paused” for the time being). That would leave about $600 as the cost for the Oculus headset itself. That seems a bit high, considering that last September Oculus was suggesting a $200 to $400 price range for the first consumer unit.

On one hand, Iribe’s internal price calculations for what he considers a “new computer” capable of running the Rift might be a bit different from the ones we came up with—an off the shelf PC with those specs might run closer to $1,200, all told. On the other hand, the minimum-spec components we priced out will no doubt be even cheaper by the time the Rift actually comes along in early 2016, which would leave more room in that $1,500 range for the Rift itself. And the words “range” and “at most” that Iribe used leave a significant amount of wiggle room, in any case.

It’s also unclear if the price Iribe is quoting would include any sort of controller for the Rift. At the Re/code conference, Iribe said that the company will be discussing its long-awaited plans for a virtual reality control solution at next month’s E3 show. But he also suggested that Oculus’ solution wouldn’t be the only suitable one. “Long term, there’s not going to be a single input device,” Iribe said. “In VR, it’s going to be several different devices.”

Some of Oculus’ major competitors in the virtual reality space seem more committed to a single, unified control scheme for their headsets.Sony’s Project Morpheus has been built with the PlayStation Move controllers in mind, while the Valve-powered HTC Vive uses handheld controllers that are tracked using two “lighthouse” base stations placed in the corners of the room. Oculus and Samsung’s Gear VR can be used with any standard bluetooth controller, including an official controller that can be optionally packaged with the device itself.

Elsewhere in the on-stage interview, Iribe suggested that children under 13 shouldn’t use the Rift until the company can “build more confidence in the health and safety side of it.” He also said that he didn’t consider it a mistake for Oculus to wait so long to release its consumer-ready hardware, allowing competitors to largely catch up with the company’s pioneering efforts in the space. “It’s such an early day that we view everybody as pioneers,” Iribe said. “VR is going to be defined over the next several decades. Think of the first Apple II being shipped in 1977. It took almost a decade for it to land in my school where I could see it.”

Last year, Iribe told Ars that the company expects to sell “north of a million units” of the first consumer version of the Rift headset.