Oculus Rift Drops Price Again: $399 With Touch Controllers – Sparks Speculation

Didn’t we see Oculus drop the price of its Rift back in March to just shy of $600? Well, Oculus has done another price drop to an even more palatable price of $399, which includes the touch controllers. This is nearly half the launch price of the same package since December. This $399 price point is yet another ‘limited time’ deal, that coincides with Oculus’ ‘Summer of Rift‘ promotion, akin to the recently passed Steam summer sale.

With such a steep price drop over the last few months, speculation is now mounting for the reasoning. In fairness, price drops over time is completely normal, but to cut prices by nearly 50% in such a short period of time, is both great, and concerning.

On the plus side, it’s now cheaper than ever to upgrade your gaming PC to a VR rig, with estimates putting the whole deal at around $1000, rather than $1500 that was originally required just six months ago. The problem now is that with SSD and memory prices continuing to rise due to supply shortages, and those pesky cyrptocurrency miners buying up all the graphics cards, inflating prices significantly. Chances are, the price of a full VR gaming rig is still in the $1500, at least for the next few months.

Dropping prices so much on the Rift, does raise some eyebrows. Oculus has said in the past that it doesn’t make a profit on the sale of each Rift, unlike HTC with the Vive. Oculus is betting on making up for that loss in game sales and exclusives through its own Rift Store. This is a tried method that works for console manufactures with locked-in ecosystems. However, the Rift has two direct competitors in the form of the said Vive from HTC in cooperation with Valve and Steam VR, and also from PlayStation VR. This doesn’t include the hundreds of mobile headsets that are coming out from the likes of LG, Samsung, and Qualcomm.

Speculation comes in with two possibilities: either Oculus isn’t selling units fast enough to drive those game sales, and is sitting on excessive stock; or there is the potential for an imminent Rift 2.0 launch in the coming months. This new Rift could be the official launch of the prototype ‘Santa Cruz’ wireless unit that was shown off at last year’s Connect convention.

In any case, with two price drops now, the Vive is looking very expensive by comparison at around $700, with only PlayStation VR nipping away at the Rift at $500 for the full bundle, or $350 for just the headset (you will need the Move controllers and Camera). While the quality of the experience will vary, it’s nice to see VR actually becoming more affordable. It’s still got a long way to go for the average customer to afford, and the number of VR supported games is growing, so it’s probably fairly safe to say that we’re beyond the ‘fad’ stage.