Oculus’ Luckey: VR Is A ‘Pretty Expensive, Relatively Primitive Proof Of Concept’

Even though in-home virtual reality soon to be a consumer reality, gamers still have a lot of questions. How much is it really going to cost? What kind of room setup do I need? Which company should I be jumping on board with?

Oculus founder and virtual reality pioneer Palmer Luckey has just added a new question to that mix, “Should I wait until the hardware is less expensive and more developed?” The answer ultimately rests with your comfort in being an early adopter, but Luckey admits that what we’ll be able to buy in the next six- to nine-months isn’t emblematic of where the technology will eventually lead.

Speaking with Gamespot, Luckey admits that he understands some consumers’ and critics’ hesitation about the technology. “I don't expect everyone to be interested in VR as it is today, which is honestly a pretty expensive, relatively primitive proof of concept compared to where we want it to be, where science-fiction depicts it,” Luckey says. “But it is inevitable that it will become better." 

Part of “better” is an inevitable decrease in price. At E3, we spoke with Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe about what consumers can expect to spend on Oculus Rift next year. We discussed previous statements leading consumers to expect that all-in, computer plus Rift, should cost around $1,500. 

“That’s just a general range. I would love to see and hope to see full package Rift plus PC for even less, for down to $1,300 or $1,200,” Iribe told me. “The $1,500 comment was around what we hope people are spending as a full package or could expect to spend at retail. You’ll buy parts a lot cheaper. If you do it yourself and are putting together your own PC, you’re going to be able to do it for a lot less than $1,500. This is something that we are pushing on our retail and OEM partners is that we’re going to be out there promoting at $1,500 or less for the full package. Rift is only a small fraction of that, and most of it is the PC.”

He also suggests that a new consumer version will be along at a brisk pace. So while Luckey’s comments about the first consumer VR not living up to science-fiction might stall some customers, we should start seeing evolution quickly. I asked if he expected a shorter, two-year cycle or something akin to the five- to eight-year cycle we’ve come to expect from living room consoles.

“It’s definitely more the former than the latter. This isn’t going to be the console five-, six-, seven-year life cycle,” Iribe told me. “VR is just going to move too fast. VR is going to innovate and evolve really rapidly. We’ve already seen with the Rift from inception to shipping a product, we’ll have gone through two developer kits, many prototypes, and leading to a consumer Rift that’s high quality. We’re going to come out with another prototype some amount of time after we ship the Rift, and then we’re going to come out with another consumer product. We want to move quickly here. But we also want to give developers time to create content and ship it against an install base. If we move too quickly, we need to always ensure absolute backward compatibility, so that anybody’s content always works on that next generation without updating.”

Iribe also understands that customers don’t want to feel like they need to update too soon. He suggests that the current smartphone cycle is something Oculus will avoid. 

“A lot of consumers don’t want to buy a product and have it outdated a few months later,” Iribe said. “There’s that kind of happy medium between the console life cycle and that smartphone cycle that’s every six months or so. That’s a little too short for where VR is going to begin. It’s going to be somewhere in between, and we’re still trying to figure out when our version two would come together and what features would land in it. And if there’s a feature that might take an extra few months to make it, we might push out the schedule if it’s that compelling of a feature.”

With Valve’s VR partnership with HTC expected to launch this year and the first consumer rift coming in early 2016, the picture must come into focus soon. It’s not just about what the hardware can do, as every manufacturer hoping to enter the field must find a way to get average users to sample the products.

With software, hardware, and pricing still large unknowns across the field, the next few months will yield a lot of details. Hopefully some of that will come during Oculus’ second Connect event, taking place later this month.

[Source: Gamespot]

Our Take
Luckey’s statements perfectly encapsulate VR’s biggest problem: expectations. This includes everything from science fiction’s representation of virtual realty to people worried about looking silly while wearing a head-mounted display.

Brian Shea recently wrote about his split views on the technology, and I share his thoughts. I’m sold on the technology, but not on the commercial viability. 

Until Oculus and its top-tier competitors figure out a way to give average people a way to try virtual reality, it’s going to be an uphill battle. That fight can’t even begin until people understand what the true cost of entry is, what software will be available, and how they’ll need to configure their gaming space to make it work.

Given how close we are to the first major release, we really don’t know nearly enough. It’s time for HTC and Valve, Oculus, and Sony to step up and start treating VR like a consumer product and not just a tech demo.