Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-pining-for-the-fjords dept.

Facebook has cut the price of the Oculus Rift for the second time this year. It debuted at $800, was cut to $600 in March, and is now $400. Is there real trouble in the virtual reality market, or is it just a normal price correction now that early adopters have been served?

It means that the Rift now costs less than the package offered by its cheapest rival, Sony, whose PlayStation VR currently totals $460 including headset and controllers.

Even so, it's not clear that it will be enough to lure people into buying a Rift. A year ago, our own Rachel Metz predicted that the Rift would struggle against Sony's offering because the former requires a powerful (and expensive) gaming computer to run, while the latter needs just a $350 PlayStation 4 game console.

Jason Rubin, vice president for content at Oculus, tells Reuters that the reduction isn't a sign of weak product sales, but rather a decision to give the headset more mass market appeal now that more games are available. Don't believe it: this is the latest in a string of bad news for the firm, which has also shut down its nascent film studio, shuttered in-store demo stations of its hardware, and stumped up $250 million as part of a painful intellectual property lawsuit in the last six months.

Here's a February story about the Oculus demo stations at Best Buy stores being shut down.

Previously: Facebook/Oculus Ordered to pay $500 Million to ZeniMax
Google Partnering With HTC and Lenovo for Standalone VR Headsets


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:34PM (1 child)

    by RamiK (1813) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:34PM (#537725)

    economies of scale...Provided the supply of silicon or other essentials isn't limited.

    Putting aside the fact heavy rare earths are scarce enough to fluctuate considerably at a weekly basis ( http://www.indmin.com/Article/3727749/RareEarths-LatestNews/Price-briefing-16-22-June.html [indmin.com] ), economy of scale has it's limits. Once you fill up the wafers, there's nothing for you to scale. It's why heavy silicon's price quotas flatten around 100k units. Same goes for automobiles: At around 300k units you're molding, stamping and punching everything so increasing the demand 10 times over can't change the per-unit BOM or meaningfully cut on machinery and personal.

    Of course, meeting higher demand means increased cash flow for R&D. But that's a form of gambling: Just because you're spending more and more money on finding a technical solution to a problem doesn't mean there is one.

    --
    compiling...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 15 2017, @02:54AM

    by Immerman (3985) on Saturday July 15 2017, @02:54AM (#539448)

    But what rare earths are used in CPUs/GPUs?

    Silicon is *not* a rare earth, it's as common as dirt. Sand (quartz) is silicon dioxide, and last I heard silicon doping is usually done with phosphorous and boron, neither of which are rare.