The holiday shopping season is afoot and there are some clear changes since last year in the PC and console arena.
First, Sony has been on the ball with an active virtual reality marketing campaign. Finally! They’ve got a really strong position with their Sony PlayStation VR headset combined with Skyrim in VR. It’s a good promotional mix for sure. You can get the PSVR HMD, controllers, camera, and Skyrim in VR for $349 USD ($479 CAD).
Facebook has definitely been fighting the price war with their Oculus Rift HMD. Their current Cyber Monday deal sells the unit with Oculus Touch controllers for $349 USD ($449 CAD). This is supposed to be a temporary deal that expires today (on Best Buy at least), though it wouldn’t surprise us to see an encore. An additional Oculus sensor can be purchased for $59 USD ($79 CAD) to enhance the room-scale capabilities (Amazon). Recognizing the quality components that Oculus is working with, they are practically giving it away.
As for HTC, it’s difficult to find an obvious sales program for them right now. The Vive is currently selling for $599 USD ($799 CAD) through multiple sources. Their big push seems to be less about price, and more about bundling Fallout 4 VR with their device.
Several of the Windows Mixed Reality devices have been somewhat discounted. For example, you can get the Acer Mixed Reality Headset for $399 USD ($499 CAD). The advantage Acer has for that $50 difference over Oculus is room-scale capability out of the box, though Oculus definitely has more content in the short term. Keep in mind that the Windows Mixed Reality devices require fewer parts (e.g. no external sensors), so their manufacturing costs are probably significantly less than their competitors.
Something we are really excited about is the accessibility that has been introduced to the PC VR space. The PC HMD makers have done well to hold their breath on pumping up the resolution counts for their devices because it is now far easier to buy a computer the has more than enough horsepower to do the job. Not just a computer – a laptop computer! We’ve been getting our hands on additional VR equipment for testing, and it helps to have machinery that doesn’t eat up all the desk space.
If you discover some amazing shopping finds, share them below!
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