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Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

Among the giant debate over cost and power, I'm just wondering what would've happened had they waited, say, two years to release. Suddenly, the cost (of both the device and of the desktop PC) go way down. With something like this, a poorly received first launch can torpedo not only the product but the entire VR industry, and when someone's spent over $2k to get it to work their expectations will be very high.

I'm sure that there are very viable reasons to release now, but I still have a feeling that it was more of a "release as soon as it's acceptable" than a "release as soon as we can be sure the launch will go amazingly."

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Two years is a lifetime in tech. This isn't a mainline consumer product even though they may market it as such. A few hardcore gamers and VR enthusiasts will buy this, slightly more will get to experience this through a friend who has purchased it. It will churn away and people who can't quite justify shelling out the cash will still be excited by the experience. By the time v2 comes around, the price point will be much more acceptable. I would expect that by v3 it will be mainstream.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw yearly iterations of the Rift for the first few versions. Ultimately I think this tech has to be paired with a console rather than a PC for widespread adoption.

The Kickstarter was in 2012. They've been putting out developer kits for years and years. There's no sensible way they could just go for another few years without releasing something.

> what would've happened had they waited, say, two years to release. Suddenly, the cost (of both the device and of the desktop PC) go way down.

When is this not the case? Two years into the future, hardware will be vastly cheaper /in two more years/

I think the only thing that could really torpedo the VR industry is if the Oculus experience isn't pleasant for the early adopters. If their system requirements are accurate, and they have built a decent piece of hardware, then I don't think initial pricing is a problem for the entire VR industry.

That being said, there are currently not a lot of options between their recommended specs (gtx 970) and the current "top of the line" gfx cards (gtx 980 Ti) If their recommended specs are inadequate to get a good experience, people simply won't have many upgrade options until the next gen GFX cards start coming out (Q2 2016 at the earliest.)

They aren't accepting submissions to the oculus platform unless they are able to drive 90 FPS on a GTX970.

Yes, but the set of things people expect to do with the Oculus is likely larger than the set of things in the Oculus platform store.

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