Would You Shell Out $1,500 to Own an Oculus Rift?

The Oculus Rift, which is preparing to seal itself to consumer eyeballs everywhere at some point early in 2016, will cost about $1,500 all told, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said at Re/code’s annual conference on Wednesday.

That price includes the Rift itself — which currently runs about $350 for developers — as well as a computer powerful enough to handle the Rift’s software. Estimates for PC with the right specs, therefore, seem to be $1,200, a bit of a tall order if you don’t already own such a rig.

Historically, Oculus has been fairly vague about numbers, and this instance is no different. But even if the total price comes down to about $1,000, as Iribe said he’d like to see, that’s still a fairly higher cost to entry that, say, the average gaming console. (To be fair, he doesn't expect sales to be on the scale of consoles, Iribe told Ars Technica in 2014.)

It also remains to be seen just how scalable the first consumer Rift will be. While Iribe mentioned that he views the release of the Rift like the initial days of Apple computers:  "It’s such an early day that we view everybody as pioneers.” Hi-ho, Rifters — just be prepared to pay for your journey into uncharted virtual territories.