Bundling Touch controllers with Rift would ‘significantly raise the cost’: Oculus

The Oculus Rift is expensive, coming in at $914 CAD, plus the price of a gaming PC (likely $1000 to $1500). Because of its high cost, many people have complained that the upcoming VR headset’s launch bundle doesn’t include Oculus Touch controllers.

According to Oculus co-founder and prolific Reddit user, Palmer Luckey, including the Rift’s motion-based Touch controllers in the Oculus Rift’s bundle, which already includes an Xbox One gamepad, would “significantly raise the cost” of the already $914 VR headset.

In an interview with Business Insider, Luckey cited Microsoft’s widely publicized misstep during the Xbox One’s initial launch. During its first few months on the market, Microsoft sold the Xbox One at a higher price point in order to include a Kinect with every console. The company later backpedalled on this decision when current Xbox head Phil Spencer took over, opting to release a cheaper version of the console that doesn’t include a Kinect.

“That’s kind of one of the things that we looked at when we thought about bundling Touch,” said Luckey in the interview.

“Do we really want to bundle this thing that is significantly raising the cost, and making the barrier to entry higher, when a lot of people are going to say ‘Why did you bundle this stupid s—, I don’t want it.’ Now I might think it’s super cool and important, but a lot of people wouldn’t want it, and what we wouldn’t want to do is promise developers we were going to bundle Touch, get them worked up around building Touch games, and then say ‘Just kidding, we’re not bundling it.’ That would have led to fallout. So we’ve been kind of executing on the same plan for a long time, and we have an aggressive timeline, but it’s a realistic timeline.”

Oculus still hasn’t revealed the price of the Oculus Touch or a solid release date, though, the motion-based controller’s release is expected to be at some point in the second half of 2016. Rift pre-orders went live earlier this month and the consumer version of the VR headset is expected to begin shipping in March.

[source]Business Insider[/source][via]VR Focus[/via]