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Is Oculus Rift Worth It's $600 Price Tag?
The consumer version of the Oculus Rift was recently announced, and some of the people who may have
been looking forward to the announcement received some shocking news. The product is debuting at the
relatively expensive price tag of US $600 rather than the significantly lower $300-400 level of previous
speculation (and quite a few announcements).
On top of this, many would-be virtual world explorers are incensed that the PC specs needed to run the
Oculus Rift properly are also out of the range of the average gamer. The running joke around Reddit is that
you basically need a "mainframe" in order to access the new world of VR, and very few people are happy
about it.
What happened in the past month? Did Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg just price its entire market out
of the Rift, killing the first true generation of VR before it even begins?
What is With That Price Tag?
To be fair, Luckey did face the music in his recent Reddit sub-chat, saying that his previous comment that
Rift would be “roughly in that $350 ballpark, but it will cost more than that” was a misstep. This quote is
taken directly from the chat:
"I was frustrated by how many people thought that was the price of the headset itself. My answer was ill-
prepared, and mentally, I was contrasting $349 with $1500, not our internal estimate that hovered close to
$599 - that is why I said it was in roughly the same ballpark. Later on, I tried to get across that the Rift
would cost more than many expected, in the past two weeks particularly."
He then tried to divert the issue, saying, "to be perfectly clear, we don't make money on the Rift." As if that
is our problem, as much as we love you for finally bringing us viable VR.
Oculus is the victim of the same culprit eating away at the corners of many gaming companies - a lack of
solid PR. We see the same problem during every cringeworthy marketing piece at major game awards
shows. Valve is currently suffering from lack of communication with its userbase after failing to
communicate major hiccups in its infrastructure through the latter part of 2015. One might think that
companies that center themselves around computers might be a bit more social media savvy, but this is
simply not the case. This is inexcusable for Oculus seeing as Facebook put $2 billion into the company. It
didn't stop pre-orders from crashing the Oculus home site, however.
What is With Those PC Specs?
The "full experience" of the Rift requires a minimum 8 GB of RAM, an Intel i5 CPU, 3 USB 3.0 ports and
an NVIDIA GTX 970 equivalent graphics card. This is really more of a minimum requirements package, as
the updated package requires more like 16 GB of RAM and an i7 to really get started.
Oculus promotes three Oculus ready PCs on its website from Alienware, Dell and Asus. The lowest starting
price tag is the Asus model for $949.
That's right - you will be paying another $1000 if you are not already up to date on your gaming rig.
Is the Investment Worth It?
With Oculus basically playing the "gotcha" card and hardware specs set in stone, the question isn't whether
you'll be spending extra money in this early new year. The question is if that money will be worth it! What

2. does Oculus have in terms of games for the new VR system? Are third party developers looking to develop
for it over its competition?
Fortunately for Oculus fans, the answers likely lead to a resounding green light on all counts. Gamespot
reports that the Rift will receive over 100 game titles in 2016 alone, well ahead of any development plans
for its competition. 20 of these titles will be first party, including the highly anticipated Lucky's Tale and
Eve: Valkyrie.
You also have time to get together your payment for the Rift, as Oculus also announced during Luckey's
chat that payment is not due until the order ships. The first batch of Rift headsets is expected to ship on
March 28th, with the second batch to ship in May.
Check out the Palmer Luckey talk on Reddit here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3zt7ul/i_am_palmer_luckey_founder_of_oculus_and_designer/
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Is Steam Wasting Its Opportunity as Leader in the PC Gaming Market?
Steam was never supposed to be the incredible PC gaming distribution platform that it is today. What was
supposed to function as little more than a DRM platform for a few personal games now stands far and away
as the most convenient, streamlined and trafficked gaming distribution platform for PC gaming. Steam also
functions as a much-needed price ceiling to counteract the gouging efforts of Sony and Microsoft, creating
a discount lane for gamers on console and PC that the two industry leaders could not afford to ignore.
However, Steam has entered 2016 with more than a few issues, most of them completely avoidable. The
remnants of the distrust created by the information leak of 2015 aren't helping anything. On top of this,
Valve seems to refuse to update the client or the mobile phone app even as sales continue along a stable
path or trend up. Origin and YouPlay actually received higher marks for consistency than Steam last year
from the Internet (informally), and noting that Origin and YouPlay have never beaten Steam in anything
ever, this is bad news for the industry leader.
No one expects any platform to run smoothly all of the time. The slightly higher savvy of the PC consumer
(PC Master Race!) actually gives Steam more legroom to mess up - Valve customers understand the
inherent uncertainty in tech. However, no one understands, nor should they have to understand, why a
company with around $1.5 billion in revenue annually can't get their social media presence together.
Facebook Barren; Twitter Wasteland
No amount of money can make an infrastructure perfect. However, a billion dollars can certainly buy a
Facebook post to tell users about upcoming problems. The Steam Facebook has not been updated in
months, and the Twitter only functions as a hard sell platform. Anyone with over a month on social media
will tell you that hard selling on Twitter is perhaps the worst strategy possible, and the only reason Steam is
getting away with it is because it's Steam.
How much does it cost to hire a couple of interns to put out a Tweet about an upcoming infrastructure
problem to the 600,000 followers on the account? What other industry would let a billion dollar company
get away with not even a token effort at a public relations team? The real question is how long Steam has
before its competition catches its infrastructure up enough to realize that good PR may actually go farther
with the public than a structural update.
Communication is the Key to the Future
If Steam plans on dominating the gaming space for the next five years like it has for the last five, it needs
new communication. The gaming industry will eventually find its way into a good marketing space - even
troubled companies like EA understand that PR can keep a company alive. If Steam does not lead that

3. charge in the PC space, then it may lose its esteemed place in the industry. Gabe, get it together before your
next backslide puts you behind your competition for good.