Original story below:
In the wake of the Oculus Rift going live for pre-order yesterday for the not-so-low price of $600, everyone is now looking at Valve’s Vive and PlayStation VR to see where they land in terms of cost.
Though no official prices have been set for either yet, an Amazon Canada page is circulating showing a $1,125.35 price for PlayStation VR, which translates to just over $800 USD.
That would be $200 more than the Oculus Rift, which many are already deeming as too expensive. But there are plenty of questions of whether or not this price is authentic, despite appearing on the official Canadian
It could just be a placeholder, as the listing also says that PS VR will be out on December 31st, 2016, which does seem like a pretty clear placeholder release date. Amazon listings do this sometime, though the American version of the listing has no price nor date listed. The CAD price is a "pre-order guarantee," which means that if the price drops between now and launch, Amazon will honor the new, lower price.
Or, it could be an error, a page pushed live sooner than it was supposed to, which also happens. Given that Oculus just announced their pre-order and price, it would totally be Sony’s style to make their own announcement shortly after to steal their thunder (see PS4 vs. Xbox One at E3 2013).
But that expectation would come with a lower price. Analysts have speculated that PS VR may come in at the low range of price, with Oculus in the middle, and Vive the premium product. But at $800, PS VR would be a pretty tough sell.
With that said, the advantage there is that of course, PS VR works with PS4. Unlike the version of the Rift which went on sale yesterday, consumers only need a PS4, which many of them already have, not a $1000-1500 supercomputer that is suited to optimally run the Rift. As Forbes’ Jason Evangelho noted yesterday, there are 36M PS4s in the wild that could potentially run VR, as opposed to 13M “optimized” PCs.
So, an $800 PS VR system plus a $350-400 console would still probably be less than the total $600 Oculus plus $1K+ computer price. Still, if this is the real price, that’s going to be sticker shock for the average PlayStation player. Only a tiny fraction of the playerbase is going to shell out double what they paid for their console for a VR system
I have strong doubts this price is legitimate, and I’m leaning much more toward this being a placeholder price or a glitched page than I am an official revelation of the price of PlayStation VR. If not, despite the lower cost of the system used to run the headset, it would still be way overpriced. I know early adoption means high prices, but $600-800 devices are pushing the limit of that concept to the detriment of VR as a whole.
I’ve reached out to Sony to see if they can shed any light on this. Keep an eye on the page to see if it’s taken down or updated in the wake of this story.
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