Oculus Rift Price Backlash: Founder Palmer Luckey Responds in Reddit AMA

The Oculus Rift VR headset is currently available for pre-order, but those interested in claiming the latest advancement in technology have to pay a pretty penny to do so. The price of this headset is $599, which is much more than the public expected due to some misleading rhetoric from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. In response to the backlash the high price has caused, Luckey addressed the issue in his recent Reddit AMA session.

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When we reported on the pre-order news earlier in the week, reports speculated that the price would be around $350, according to Polygon. So when the price was revealed to be nearly double the original estimate, which was determined by Luckey's previous statements, consumers were not happy.

"I handled the messaging poorly. My answer was ill prepared, and mentally, I was contrasting $349 with $1500, not our internal estimate that hovered close to $599 [...] I apologize," the tech icon explained on Reddit. "Later on, I tried to get across that the Rift would cost more than many expected, in the past two weeks particularly. There are a lot of reasons we did not do a better job of prepping people who already have high-end GPUs, legal, financial, competitive, and otherwise, but to be perfectly honest, our biggest failing was assuming we had been clear enough about setting expectations."

This price might seem high, but it is virtual reality we're talking about here. In February, the company is planning on offered a headset and PC bundle for $1,499, according to IGN.

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Virtual Reality