Developers are trying to make Oculus Rift Free

The Oculus Rift team was present at Develop13 (an industry conference for game developers) in Brighton last week and the director of Oculus Rift, Brendan Iribe, made an interesting statement saying that they are working on a commercial scheme which may bring the virtual reality helmet in the hands of players for free.

[Need4Game]

Awesome

[Colzer01]

its "FREE"

[lilbrat23]

Nothing in life is FREE whats the catch?lol

[zeee]

^ this

wait... I wouldn't say nothing. Free advice is well.... free and everyone wants to pass it on.

[nveenio]

At N4G, opinions are not only free, but mandatory.

[Blackdeath_663]

well before you get too excited lets just hope the creators of the oculus rift don't get shafted. it is however a clever idea if they make a standard VR kit available commercially en masse they can succeed where everyone else failed. the technology is there, the interest is there i really do feel this can be the best attempt and VR gaming yet

[JasonXE]

That would be amazing

[Mounce]

It'd be more than awesome.

Imagine if Sony bought the devs of Oculus AND Gaikai for PS4 O.O

Unsure how they can disperse Oculus as a free device to devs and have it spread in a multitude of directions without it solely being exclusive to a platform without higher-support for funds and support to make it come true.

[Ogygian]

Nothing is free in this world except from charities. I wouldn't be praising this until we know how they are actually going to make money off the device if they do this.

Personally, I'd rather pay $300 and just enjoy my rift than have to deal with some "scheme" which probably involves advertisement, mandatory surveys or another flavour of the same general idea.

[hesido]

They could stream ads right in the middle of your retina, unless you closed your eyes. It could be disturbing! It was supposed to be cheap anyway, compared to other solutions. I'm hoping there's going to be a choice, and PS4 compatibility. :)

[LOGICWINS]

They would make money off of developers buying the SKU. The more consumers that have the Rift, the more willing devs will buy the SKU and make games.

Either way, the CEO said its going to be affordable. He said he would keep it right around the price it is now. So $200-$300 is a safe bet.

[devwan]

SKU? Are you confusing your acronyms?

[Ogygian]

That would cause problems though. If the Rift is genuinely free, with no strings attached then every man and his dog will want one. People who aren't interested will grab the device, just because something is better than nothing.

Not only that but the money from devs buying the SKU will be far too small to subsidise anything. The Rift is in early days and has a weak bargaining position, seeing as it is (in the eyes of the corporates) still seen as a huge gamble. Oculus will have to be trying to convince devs into supporting the headset rather than the reverse, at least to begin with.

Keeping the device affordable is indeed a more realistic objective.

If Oculus use their new funding to buy in bulk this can be achieved. The company will also probably just aim to break even at the start, allowing a cheaper price while it attempts to sell headsets and build loyalty.

[FragMnTagM]

This is not the acronym you are searching for.

I think you are looking for SDK.

[LOGICWINS]

Oh oh thanks for correcting me.

@SpartanLemur- I think they mean "free" in the sense that it would come free of charge if u brought a certain game, PC, or console.

[starchild]

That's exactly what I was thinking. Nothing is free. They have to make their money somehow.

I would rather pay them the $300 or $400 for their hard work in bringing something like the Rift to market. It's well worth it based on what I experienced with the dev unit.

[LOGICWINS]

"I would rather pay them the $300 or $400 for their hard work in bringing something like the Rift to market."

But they probably want the mainstream on board. Asking casuals to part with $300 to $400 for a VR headset(when they can buy a console with that money) is ludicrous if you ask me. By making it free for consumers, they're going to reach a lot more people.

In countless interviews, they've said that they want the AVERAGE gamer to experience VR. You think the average gamer will part with $300-$400 for a headset? Obviously they have a plan to make it free or SUPER affordable.

[Scatpants]

I just hope they can get it to have console support. My PC can probably run it, I just prefer to play on consoles

[LOGICWINS]

Console support would be great but its going to take YEARS for top tier devs like Rockstar, ND, or Irrational Games to do something thats built around the technology.

As far as the next-next gen consoles are concerned, VR will be the main focus and thats when EVERY game will be built around the tech.

[starchild]

I'm getting a PS4, but I'm not interested in them trying to do VR on it.

Consoles had a hard time just doing stereoscopic 3D this generation. The resolution was dropped, the framerates became much worse, and the visuals were downgraded.
http://images.eurogamer.net...
http://images.eurogamer.net...

The Rift needs 60fps, in addition to the stereoscopic 3D. Consoles simply don't have the horsepower to do the kind of next gen visuals we expect in stereoscopic 3D VR at 60fps.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013...
"But what kind of hardware are you going to need to run this thing?

“You’ll want a decent gaming rig,” he explained. “Because you want to be running at 60 frames per second, with Vsync, in stereo 3D, and that takes a decent graphics card." -Oculus VP of Product Development Nate Mitchell.

I don't want a watered down VR experience on consoles, I want to play fully next-gen games in all their glory. I want to play something with visuals like the new Mirror's Edge or the Infiltrator demo inside the Rift. Only the PC will have the hardware performance to make that possible.

[Scatpants]

The consumer version of the Rift will most likely use one 1080P screen cut in half with one half for each eye. Meaning that the resolution for the stereoscopic images will be half 1080p. I think that might be doable with the new consoles.

[Tsukuyomi]

Neat

[Adityac]

Say what?

[Red_Devilz]

O M G. I'm ready to work for these guys (for free). Sweet XD

[Apophiss2004]

We are working on the website so I wanted to apologize for any inconvenience that you may encounter.

Thks for your understanding.

[Sarobi]

I was planning on buying one a later after it launched.. but making it free would be awesome. I think it'll be a big hit even if it costs somewhere along the lines of 150 - 200

[Tatsuya]

I would pay huge bucks for it if I can get one now, fully optimized for the PS4. But, it would be a bonus if it's free!

[kasser]

Maybe they are thinking of bundling the hardware with many full games. This is possible & also may increase popularity of the device & technology investment from developer side.

Suppose oculus was bundled with Doom 3, an old game where sales profitability isn't a concern at this time. However, this is a good investment for id because a)getting people attention at Doom franchise b) id will have an advantage for being the most experienced dev in VR and their future can implemented probably for it.

For people doubting this from happening, just look at AMD's Never Settle bundle. It make you feel you are paying less for their GPUs and it encourage you to buy their 1000$ RHD7990 more specially if you don't own any of the bundled games!

I really hope this VR technology take off. We need more like this and less motion controls