Update, 7/14/17, 6:59am PT: Oculus announced in a blog post that it's making the price of the Rift-plus-Touch bundle permanent at $499. That's $100 cheaper than the shocking price drop from March, which saw the company knock $200 off of the price of the package. In other words, the Rift bundle is now $300 less expensive than in was just a few months ago. For now, you can still nab a bundle for just $399.
Original article, 7/10/17, 6:40am PT:
If you’ve been contemplating buying into a VR platform, you probably know how difficult it is to pick between the different available options, but Oculus might just have made that decision a little easier with its latest price drop. The complete Rift + Touch bundle is now available for $399--a second $200 price drop on top of the drop we saw back in March.
This is the price point that Oculus had originally promised long before its introduction last year.
The $399 bundle includes the Rift headset, Touch controllers, a wireless Xbox controller, two Constellation cameras, the cables you need to connect everything to your PC, and seven free games. These include Lucky’s Tale, Medium, Toybox, Quill, Dead and Buried, Dragon Front, and Robo Recall.
Significantly, the whole kit now costs $100 less than the PSVR bundle. One also can't help but wonder if Oculus also has the incoming crop of PC-connected HMDs from Acer and HP (and soon others) in mind with this price drop. The kits from Acer and HP cost just $300 and $329, respectively, but we know that the consumer Acer HMD--bundled with the Microsoft motion controllers--will cost $400.
At this point, the HTC Vive, paired with two motion controllers, is still selling for its original price of $799, and despite Oculus’ March price drop, the Vive is still topping the Steam Hardware Survey charts with almost twice as many headsets as the Rift CV1. With the complete Rift kit now priced at half what a Vive costs, it will be interesting to see what happens to the adoption rates, or whether HTC will also respond with a price drop. Our survey last year indicated that the largest obstacle preventing people from stepping into VR is the price, so we’re curious whether people will still be willing to pay double for an HTC Vive over a Rift (or for that matter, an Acer HMD).
It's still a difficult time to get into VR if you don’t already have a PC with a powerful-enough graphics card, though. Due to the Ethereum mining craze, high-end graphics cards are sold out all over, and when they are available, prices are sky high.
The $399 price for the Rift bundle is said to be for a “limited time only” for the next six weeks as part of a so-called "Summer of Rift" promotion. However, it could also be an indication that a new product is coming (despite multiple sources claiming that the Rift isn’t going away anytime soon). There's a slim chance the price drop is intended to make up for the graphics cards price hikes, too. We've reached out to Oculus for a comment. Regardless, at this low price, we might just see a more mainstream audience finally make the leap to high-end VR.
