An interesting move on Oculus's part and a risky one
It means the min spec pc has dropped from around a thousand bucks to 500 bucks but the question is can you actually run all the vr games on a 960 based machine and not end up with frame rate issues and therefore horrific vomit inducing lag
It's obvious they are trying to expand their market base as I would guess they are not selling as many units as they wanted due to the high cost of entry and with PSVR literally around the corner (oct 13th) and a lot of the gaming press saying it's the sweet spot of better visual fidelity than the cardboards and gearvr but the lower cost of entry than the higher end units like oculus and vive they want to capitialise on those people who might buy the PSVR by saying hey our headset will work on a 500 dollar machine which makes it sort of price parity with the PSVR (assuming you don't already have a ps4)
Still from what I've heard in some games even the original min spec was pushing things with 970 not quite up to keeping things above 90fps in some of the more demanding vr experiences. So dropping it down even further is presumably just going to make thing worse.
It seems an unwise move in this early stage giving people a bad experience is likely to lead to poor word of mouth "oh that new VR just makes you sick it's not worth the money" having the inverse effect of reducing the market making people less likely to risk it
I think at this point with all the positive press and good reviews plus the overall lowish price point PSVR is likely going to sweep the board it has it's problems (the main one six year old motion tracking tech that is slightly dodgy and nowhere near as accurate and robust as the oculus or vive solutions) but it's much better positioned than either vive or oculus to go mainstream.
It's going to hit a price point of 500 bucks for a headset and the motion controllers (which oculus is still not released although I'd expect a date to be annouced at their current show oculus connect 3 running now) on a machine a lot of people already have in their lounges and if you have the camera and the waggle sticks then it's only 400 bucks for the headset.
For oculus it;s 500 bucks just for the headset (the rumor is something like 200 more for the motion controllers) and the vive is 800 bucks and then you need a machine capable of running them which util now meant another 1000 bucks.
It seems a somewhat anti consumer move that will probably back fire
Comments
I agree! I smell Oculus bullshit!
On PS4, there's a closed system that developers can work against to get the VR running smooth. Sure, there will be a graphics fidelity drop but game developers know what they're dealing with. As a consumer if you're going to drop 500 on a VR then it better had bloody work out of the box. I can see that being possible with PS4, even if there are limitations with the tracking.
PC VR requires a lot more cash and nouse to make sure that it's going to work without problems. I imagine that games will just back down the graphics quality to keep the 90fps and as such the experience might be worse than just having a monitor!