Questions surrounding the $599 price tag for the Oculus Rift flooded the Jan. 6 Reddit AMA with Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. The frustration became clear immediately, with hundreds of comments filling the /r/iama subreddit within minutes. The most upvoted post quickly became a 25-part question which was promptly deleted by the moderator. The AMA went quiet for 40 minutes until Luckey clarified he wasn’t ignoring the now 1600 questions, he was in the midst of answering the initial 25.
Many Redditors intended to hold him to his ballpark $350 estimate, even pulling quotes from 2013. “I handled the messaging poorly,” Luckey admitted.
Luckey gave details on Oculus' plans to provide VR experiences other than just games. He cited another Oculus product, Samsung's Gear VR, to remind redditors the Oculus Rift is built for more than gaming. “Somewhat surprisingly, the majority of time spent right in Gear VR is video and experiences, not games," he said.
The new Oculus Remote will help the Rift make the transition to appeal to non-gamers. Luckey points to Oculus Video on Gear VR, which he says can be explored with just a gaze and a tap. "We designed the Oculus Remote to be simple and intuitive input device for navigating VR experiences, especially when a fully-featured gamepad doesn’t make sense.”
Oculus is working to develop features and apps for the Rift which are similar to Samsung’s Gear VR. “Oculus Video has a paid video store that features full-length films from our content partners. It also supports sideloaded video playback. You can expect similar features to come to Rift over time,” he said during the AMA. Games will not be the only focus of the Rift. Netflix, Twitch, Vimeo and Hulu all already have apps for the Gear VR. The list of movies made for VR is bound to grow with time. There are already filmmakers devoted to making the cinematic leap to virtual reality.
The 360-degree view also makes the Rift a novel platform for watching sports. “Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face, just by putting on goggles in your home,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the Daily Mail this week. The Rift has even made its way to operating room and could be used as a tool for medical students and surgeons.
With emerging competitors like HTC Vive and PlayStation VR, Luckey asserted that for now, Oculus plans to develop top of the line products even if that means tacking on an unanticipated $200. “In the long run, there are going to be a ton of VR devices out there serving every price point, much like the television market," he said.
Palmer hopes VRV fans remember Oculus helped pave the way for companies like Google, Sony and HTC to develop VR technology in the first place. “We have been working on VR for a long time. A lot of these players did not even come into the game until long after we were well along on our current path - when Vive was first announced, for example, we had already shown our Crescent Bay prototypes six months prior, and showed the final Rift just a couple months later. Our strategy cannot change at the last second just because competition shows up and ships after we do.”
Luckey was hesitant to reveal any specific features for the next generation Rift. He said some features testing at Oculus Research may make it to the next product but others will have to wait. “We are researching nobody else is, and have by far the largest VR team in the world to do so. We will continue doing things that we are uniquely positioned to do," he said.
