As the world of Virtual Reality starts to become more and more accessible for all involved, thanks to improved mobile options as well high-end options like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, many thought that the associated price tag would fall as a result. This doesn’t appear to be the case however, as both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are priced at the very high-end of the market, and that’s not even counting the required PC hardware to run these headsets, which can be more expensive than the headsets themselves, if one doesn’t already have one. Earlier this week, we covered the news that readers across the pond in the UK would be able to try out the Oculus Rift in more stores, and now that the Oculus Rift is in the UK, the price of the Oculus Touch controllers has been revealed.
As spotted by one UK member of the Engadget team on Twitter, UK retailer, GAME, has the Oculus Touch controllers listed for pre-order in some of their stores, for a whopping £189.99, which is roughly $250. It is worth noting that GAME is often quite a bit more expensive than the RRP of some games and hardware, but even so this is a steep price tag that many weren’t expecting. After all, they’re only controllers, right? Well, there is going to be a lot of high-end tech inside of these handle-looking controllers, and given the amount of time that Oculus has spent developing them, they should work brilliantly. For UK readers already eyeing up the steep price tag of £549 for the Oculus Rift on its own, it’s likely that the Rift is to remain a niche product if it remains at these sort of prices.
With Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Daydream, which could be launched alongside the new Pixel phones during an October 4th event, probably offering a good-enough experience for a fraction of the cost of the Oculus Rift – and the HTC Vive – it might take a lot longer for high-end virtual reality options like this to take off in the long-run. Of course, final pricing for the Oculus Touch controllers will no doubt be set per region at a later date.
