Oculus Rift Price Drop: VR Headset System, Touch Controllers Now $200 Cheaper

Oculus announced at GDC Wednesday that they plan to drop the price for a full Rift setup (including Touch controllers) by $200, according to a report from The Financial Times.

The price drop includes a $100 discount on the Rift headset and an additional $100 discount for the Touch motion controllers, which brings the total cost for a system to $600. At its new $600 price point, the hardware for the Rift is only $200 more than Sony's PlayStation VR and $200 less than the competing HTC Vive headset. Early adopters aren't left totally in the dark, though — as The Verge notes, Oculus will offer a $50 store credit to anyone who bought Touch controllers at full price within the past 30 days.

The price cut comes as higher-end VR companies try to bring the technology out of the niche and into the mainstream. Basic VR devices like Google Cardboard or Samsung's Gear VR have been a popular entry point for most people thanks to their accessibility — you only need a basic headset and smartphone to experience VR — but premium options like the Vive and Rift have struggled to penetrate the market thanks to their high cost of entry. By comparison, both devices need to be paired with a gaming-capable PC with higher-end hardware like discrete graphics cards.

These hurdles have been reflected in respective sales figures for all three major higher-end VR devices. Sony confirmed Monday that it has sold 915,000 PlayStation VR units since its launch last fall. Unlike the Vive or Rift, the PSVR only needs to be paired with a PlayStation 4. Oculus has yet to disclose official sales figures for the Rift, but according to analyst firm SuperData Research, they estimate that the company had sold 243,000 units by the end of 2016.