Oculus Rift experience will cost around $1,500, says CEO

VR headset Oculus Rift

You'll be able to experience Oculus Rift for "around $1,500" when it releases early next year, according to Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe. Before you panic, he's talking about people who don't own a gaming PC, which means the unit itself will be only a fraction of that cost.

“We 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,” Iribe said at the Re/code Code Conference today. According to Re/Code's report, Iribe wants the price to drop below $1,000 eventually.

It's an interesting statement, especially when sized up next to the required specs for the Rift. Referring to PC Part Picker, you can build a system to those requirements for $1,200, meaning the Rift itself could be aiming for a $300 or less price point. That's in keeping with co-founder Nate Mitchell's estimation that the unit would cost between $200 and $400.

Meanwhile, Valve and HTC's Vive headset is expected to release at a "higher price point", according to HTC marketing head Jeff Gattis. He didn't give a ballpark figure, though he'd have been aware of Oculus's price goal.

For more, check out everything you need to know about Oculus Rift.

Shaun Prescott
Australian Editor

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.

Latest in VR Hardware
A woman wearing a VR headset with dramatic, colourful lighting across the background
'World’s smallest LEDs' could lead to accurately lit screens with 127,000 pixels per inch and much more immersive VR
Varjo Aero
Nvidia confirms 'open issue' with Varjo Aero VR headsets and RTX 50-series graphics cards after affected users ask for help
A "sensor-actuator–coupled gustatory interface chemically connecting virtual and real environments for remote tasting," or essentially a virtual reality tongue in an artificial mouth
Would you like to taste fish soup in VR? Me neither, but this electronic tongue does it anyway
Varjo Aero
Varjo Aero VR headsets seem to be not working on RTX 5090s, and its community is opting for strange solutions while waiting for an Nvidia driver release to fix it
A still from a YouTube video showing The Swedish Maker cutting a piece of wood with power tools while wearing a Meta Quest 3 VR headset.
YouTuber The Swedish Maker wears a Meta Quest 3 VR headset for his entire woodworking project and miraculously emerges with all fingers intact
The HTC Vive XR Elite front three quarter angle
Google is bulk buying HTC Vive engineers to help Android XR become a platform that can rival Meta's VR/AR dominance
Latest in News
Two brightly colored stormtroopers dressed like Run-DMC stand in front of PAX Australia's WELCOME HOME banner.
Tickets for PAX Australia 2025 are on sale now
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again