This week marks the end of Oculus’ lengthy Summer of Rift sale, during which the VR headset and its Touch controllers were priced at $399. The $200 price cut came as a huge surprise when it was announced in early July, but did it actually have a big impact on sales? VP of Content Jason Rubin says it did.
Speaking to MCV, Rubin noted that Rift’s hardware sales were “strong” following the last sale, though he didn’t offer specific stats. “Every dollar isn’t an equal dollar,” Rubin said. “This $200 drop is a bigger deal than the last $200 drop. It’s not a linear progression down to zero. You end up at a place where people say ‘Oh, this is something I can totally afford’, as opposed to ‘I’m [still] thinking about this because it’s a large purchase.'”
Rubin also revealed that “VR usage” has risen over the summer, bucking the traditional videogame trend fuelled by a lack of big releases. “We’ve found a lot of people are buying multiple pieces of software, and that’s yet another reason to throw the hardware out there at a very reasonable price and bring in even more people.”
As for Touch itself, Rubin noted that the controller sales were “catching up” with the Rift’s own numbers. These days, Rift and Touch are bundled together in one package, but when the latter initially launched in December 2016 they were sold separately.
Still no official figures, then, but Oculus itself certainly seems to be happy with the sales it’s seeing. With the summer sale’s conclusion Rift and Touch will cost $499, which is $100 less than the new $599 price tag for the HTC Vive.
