Oculus Rift VP of Product and co-founder Nate Mitchell recently announced that consumers will have their hands on the VR system in Q1 of 2016. He also confirmed that the gear can only be used with a capable PC and pricing trend estimates it will not be cheap.
In a recent Disrupt TechCrunch interview with Nate Mitchell, one of the creators of Oculus Rift has confirmed the Q1 2016 shipment to consumers. He added that the VR gear has to be paired with a gaming PC, those that are capable of playing modern games today. This could mean devices that have great speed and graphics performance. As far as compatibility is concern, Mitchell vaguely said that they haven't announced any partnership to date, but it's something they're always exploring. Although the currently available Oculus Developer kit is compatible with Mac PCs, the device's lack of graphical quality lessens the VR experience. The Oculus co-founder hasn't put a price tag on the upcoming product but estimates suggests that it won't be cheap.
Oculus Development Kit 2 is currently offered at $350. It runs with a PC or any computer device that is able to play high powered games. Oculus's CES demo this year was driven by PC with nVidia GTX 980, a graphics card priced at $600. Oculus is currently in partnership with Samsung exclusively offering the VR Gear that retails at $200 and can only run through a Samsung device at a mere $650. Since Oculus Rift has to be complemented by a PC for it to run its possible partnership with computer manufacturers may drive up its retail prices. The company hasn't given any information of whether Oculus Rift is going to be a universally compatible device or not. Price isn't the only thing Oculus has to worry about.
So far there have been two virtual reality product announcements made this year. Recently, Microsoft showcased its VR device HoloLens in its Build Developer Conference followed by a media and devs trial demo.
Will Oculus get a bigger market share before HoloLens and other VR gears are out in the market?
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