As of last Sunday, we now have a good idea how much VR is going to cost. $599 for the Oculus Rift, and $799 for their biggest competitor,HTC and Valve’s HTC Vive. Originally the news came from a leak during the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona but it was later confirmed by HTC, according to Polygon.
Looking at the post made by HTC the $800 bucks plus shipping will net you everything you see in the picture above: two wireless controllers, the 360 degree sensors, and the Vive itself. Along with all of the gear, the Vive will also come packaged with Job Simulator by Owlchemy Labs and Fantastic Contraption by Northway Games and Radial Games.
The HTC Vive will also have an integrated phone functionality which will keep you up to date with the real world without having to take off the head set.
If you want to pre-order the HTC Vive you can do so on February 29th starting at 10 AM Eastern time; with its expected release to be in April of this year.
So that’s $800 not including the high end PC needed to run it, which will cost you another $1599 minimum going by the Vive Optimized PCs on the HTC Vive website making the total for a Vive VR experience roughly $2500. Granted, not every user will need to buy an entire PC but that’s just one more barrier to entry that the consumer will need to get past. VR may be the way of the future but early adopters are going to need to dig pretty deep in their wallets if they want to be apart of it.