Oculus VR is incredibly expensive, costing $599, and also demanding extremely high end PCs to even run. This kind of price has naturally had people worried that other VR solutions, such as HTC’s Vive, or Sony’s PlayStation VR, may also end up charging a pretty penny.
However, that does not necessarily have to be the case- Oculus Rift is an extremely high end VR solution, which contributed to the price. PlayStation VR, at the very least, will not have this problem, Oculus inventor Palmer Luckey thinks.
Speaking to IB Times, Luckey said that the Oculus is a more high-end product than PlayStation VR, and that it also demands far more upfront technical investment, in the kind of specs that it demands to even run.
“It’s also worth noting that their headset isn’t quite as high-end as ours — it’s still, I think, a good headset — and the PlayStation 4 is not nearly as powerful as our recommended spec for a PC,” he said.
“I think that there’s not many people who already own a PS4 who don’t own a gaming PC who are going to go out and make that roughly $1,500 all-in investment in the Rift. It really is a separate market.
“They’re bringing virtual reality to a different group of people who I don’t think were ever really a part of our market anyway.”
So in the end, PlayStation VR is going to expand the VR market while being cheaper, and not as technologically accomplished as Oculus. Essentially, it sounds as though the PlayStation VR is the console equivalent to the Oculus’ high end PC.
