The Oculus Rift preorders opened up today, along with pricing for the device and many of our wallets shriveled up and died of fright. The response was so much so that OculusVR founder Luckey Palmer took to twitter, claiming that not only is the Rift not overpriced, but is actually extremely cheap for what it is.
The mouth piece of OculusVR has been vocal on his Twitter account answering many questions and concerns leading up to the preorder date of the Oculus Rift. Today Luckey responded to certain outrage that the Rift may be price-gouging, stating that these claims are unfounded and opposite of the actual value of the device.
To reiterate, we are not making money on Rift hardware. High end VR is expensive, but Rift is obscenely cheap for what it is.
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) January 6, 2016
Luckey has stated in the past that he and OculusVR Inc. are expecting to make an enormous amount of profit off of the sales of the Rift. Besides being backed by Kickstarter, the group found funding via Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg to continue development of the device under a little less pressure. It’s hard to say exactly what the Oculus Rift should be worth as it’s mostly a very special peripheral, but $599 is certainly a hefty price tag for a lot of people.
That said, the preorders for Oculus Rift are proceeding rather successfully. The first group of preorders for a March delivery are already bought up and new preorders are being pushed back to May.