There is finally an estimated price floating around for the Oculus Rift, but Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe isn’t prepared to give any hard figures for the consumer version of the VR headset just yet.
Speaking at the Re/Code Code Conference, Iribe said that the Oculus Rift would, if you “… 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.”
That’s a combined price, for the PC and the Rift headset, of about R18,000. But this is South Africa, so we’re going to have to do a little figuring to get a decent estimate of the Rift’s standalone cost. If you’re after a PC rig capable of running the Oculus Rift as intended, you’re looking at spending around R14,000 without an operating system installed. And that’s without the monitor, peripherals, extra hard drives and anything except the tower and internal components (pricing via Evetech).
Accounting for tax overseas, which should push that $1,500 figure up, and import costs here in SA and we’re expecting a minimum standalone cost for the Oculus Rift of R5,000.
The price hopefully won’t stay that high. Brendan Iribe has said that he hopes that the combined figure for the Rift and a PC capable of running it will fall to below $1,000 (R12,000). Which means making the Rift cheaper as well as reducing the spec the component needed to get it working. We’ll keep you posted if there’s an official price announcement.
Source: Re/Code