The Oculus Rift price isn’t the only thing keeping it niche

GR:
Let’s get something out of the way straight off: Oculus Rift is wicked cool. If you’ve ever had the chance to try it out, you know that it works incredibly well without giving you headaches or squishing your glasses or anything. It is a damn nice bit of kit. Pre-sales started today, and are moving quite briskly despite the relatively spendy price point - in fact, I bet you know someone hitting refresh as fast as they can. Its excellence isn’t in question, or indeed, the point. The reason the Oculus Rift is going to be stuck as a niche product isn’t because it isn’t cool, it’s because most folks simply couldn’t care less about the kind of cool it is.

[JsonHenry]

Niche? I buy a new cellphone and new video card almost every year for that price. It is not really as "niche" as you might think. But yeah, if it was cheaper more people would adopt it of course.

[DarkOcelet]

Because everyone can afford getting a new cellphone and a new video card almost every year :/

And btw Cellphones that costs 600 bucks are expensive.

[JsonHenry]

Actually a LOT of people can and do buy a new cellphone and video card on an annual basis. Don't assume everyone is broke or poor. Go look up the average income in Western Countries and you'd be surprised at how much the average person has to spend on "niche" items.

The only thing that makes this niche is the fact you have to wear the monstrosity. Not the pricetag.

[2pacalypsenow]

No one buys cellphones cash

[aquaticDonut]

...Dude, buying video cards at all isn't even common. Let alone the $300 970 this has as a MINIMUM requirement. It's extremely niche.

[bobtheimpaler]

VR in general is going to be niche for quite some time. I understand that it's going to take a while to reach mainstream as the content grows and the experiences mature. Not going to stop me from getting into it this year though.

[kenwonobi]

Because PSVR will be the cheaper, mainstream, heavily backed, simpler to set up alternative. It'll be niche in the same way people who missed out on those cool Plasma TVs from Hitachi missed out because of price barriers. The people who missed out on some Bose high end products but always wanted them type of cool tech niche. Some people will be lucky. Others will wonder how the better half is living. That's life.

[Lonnie18]

PSVR will probably be cheaper and just as cool if not better, will launch around Aug/Sep and have the backing of well developed games and not to mention 50mil PS4s by that time. So Sony is doing it right, you have to make it an easy experience to adopt not to mention at least make the interface look sleek and cool, the Oculus looks like a S&M product lol.

[N311V]

I agree that VR will always be niche and for that reason I think it'll fail as a gaming platform. The install base will be too small for publishers, AAA games may never appear on VR or will quickly disappear.

I hope I'm wrong but it is my concern.