At the 2016 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Sony finally revealed that the PlayStation VR will come with a $399 price tag sometime in October.
Aside from the pricing and availability, details of the company's first contender in the virtual reality game have been cropping up since last year's GDC when it debuted as Project Morpheus. Now that the two important aspects have come to light, everyone has a good idea of how it'll stand in the competition.
First off, it's a lot more affordable compared to the costs of Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive at $599 and $799 respectively, not to mention that they require some pretty powerful rigs to run.
To put things into perspective, Oculus announced Rift-ready computers that range from $1,499 to more than $3,000 in total, while PS4 bundles are available at $349. That means it's easier to jump into the virtual reality bandwagon with the PlayStation VR, especially for PS4 owners who already have an Eye or a Move controller that goes for $59 and $49 respectively.
To quickly breakdown the cost for a full PlayStation VR experience, $399 is for the virtual reality headset itself, $59 for the Eye, $49 for a Move controller and the console for $349 boils down to $856. Still, that's roughly the same as the starting price for the HTC Vive minus the required PC.
It's also worth mentioning that the PlayStation VR has the potential to dominate the console virtual reality scene thanks to its $399 price point, just like how the Samsung Gear VR became immensely popular because of its affordable $99 price tag.
Going over what else Sony is bringing to table, the company says that more than 50 games will be available at the same time when the PlayStation VR launches in October. On top of that, the Playroom VR will be free to download at launch, which consists of six multiplayer games.
Although the PlayStation VR came a little later than planned, Sony apologizes for the delay, pointing out that it wanted to be completely ready before launching the virtual reality headset.
"PlayStation VR represents a transformative experience in gaming, and we wanted to take the time needed to launch with a broad variety of content and a sufficient supply of hardware," Sony says.
With more than 36 million PS4 consoles sold, millions of gamers can go ahead and join the virtual reality scene for $399 in October.
