Hmm the ps3 launched at ~$600 and kinda bombed and then the ps4 launched at $399 and got applause(OK not the only reason). Point being pricing matters. Sometimes you just be wary of the scope creep and launch a focused product.
That's because for games, Xbox 360 offered superior experience during the early years. Xbox 360 even had a seperior GPU and easier to code for architecture which meant cross-platform 3rd titles ran and looked better on 360.
If there is a competing VR headset that costs $400 and delivers a superior experience to Oculus Rift, then the price would need to drop. Until that happens, they can charge a premium for the unique experience. Frankly, they could charge $999.
In the audiophile world, people who want the best in class pay.
Shure SE846 came out for $999/950 pounds.
HiFiMan HE1000 = $3000 US
Audeze LCD-4 = $4000 US
Unlike videocards or CPUs where you can directly estimate/measure the price/performance or perf/watt or FPS, VR is much like those headphones => It's an
experience.
An ice cream sundae at Serendipity 3 restaurant in New York costs
$1000 US. Why? It's an experience.
Why is a $1000 Titan X a rip-off? Because we can directly compare it to Fury X CF or 980Ti or 980Ti SLI. What am I comparing Oculus Rift to state that it's not worth $600? Until someone can offer a
superior VR experience to Oculus rift or 80-90% of that experience for 50-70% of the price, $600 is cheap. Once someone does, Oculus will either have pricing pressure or pressure to release a better unit.
I will start by saying that I want VR to succeed, but in reading your analogy in bold, this thought occurred to me.
Content.
All of the examples you gave did not need new/original content to work.
- When DVDs, BluRay came out, you couldn't go and buy 200-300 movies at launch
- When micro-4/3rds cameras came out, there was hardly a great selection of lenses while every DSLR owners would talk smack about their accumulated collection and selection of lenses, while ignoring all the things people hated about DSLR - size, bulkiness, weight, etc.
- When PS3 came out and had a BluRay player, almost no one thought the price premium of that feature was worth it over the Xbox 360. Today, a PS3 can still be used as a BluRay player.
- When early 30" 2560x1600 LCD monitors came out, they cost an arm and a leg. It wasn't unusual for them to cost $1300-1500 US. Today, it's possible to buy a superior 30-32" monitor for $400-500 US. Same with 4K monitors of 2-3 years ago vs. now.
Look at the original iPad. When it first came out, a lot of people thought it was an overpriced and useless toy and there weren't many tablet apps for this new device. Point is, cutting edge tech starts off high and eventually improves in quality and drops in price. To truly judge if VR is going to fail or not is going to take years, not months.
$600 for a revolutionary experience, is significantly cheaper than forking out more than that for a meager performance increase in GPU performance.
Anyone remember the prices of new TV screen tech? Enthusiasts that want new toys and pay so much for iPhones or Samsung stuff shouldn't complain about a $600 VR headset that's top of the line.
Ya, that's the key word right there. Literally 40+ million people buy the next iteration of iPhone
per quarter, a $650 US device at minimum and don't even blink an eye. Cuz of work I have 5->6S and frankly it's all "the same ****". You cannot tell me that iPhone 6S is
revolutionary experience compared to iPhone 6/Samsung S6 because it's not and yet people have no problem paying $650 for another new toy every 12-18 months that functions 95% the same as their nearly as good smartphone phone from 1-2 years ago.
On this very forum, people hype up i7 6700K to the moon and that chip is
$420 US (on best seller's list!), a CPU for which you need to whip out MSI AB overlay/FRAPs/benchmarks to measure that's it's actually a measurable improvement over a nearly 3-year-old i7 4770K OC. So let me get this straight, 6-13% more CPU performance is worth $400+ US on a CPU chip alone, but $600 for something that is
completely different to what we had for decades is too expensive?
The value of VR is not something that should be measured with FPS counters in the way we compare the value of GPUs.
"A new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity, and decline. This sequence is known as the product life cycle and is associated with changes in the marketing situation, thus impacting the marketing strategy and the marketing mix."
Introduction Stage – This stage of the cycle could be the
most expensive for a company launching a new product. The
size of the market for the product is small, which means sales are low, although they will be increasing. On the other hand, the cost of things like research and development, consumer testing, and the marketing needed to launch the product can be very high, especially if it’s a competitive sector.
http://productlifecyclestages.com/
Everything that's happening with Oculus Rift is 100% normal for a new tech and honestly for someone who really cared that much about buying the Rift early at the best price, they should have Kickstarted it since they'd get the headset for free.
"As a small token of our appreciation for your support, all Kickstarter backers who pledged for a Rift development kit will get a free Kickstarter Edition Oculus Rift! And like all Rift pre-order purchasers, you’ll receive a bundled copy of Lucky’s Tale and EVE: Valkyrie."
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game/posts/1458224