Rift is "obscenely cheap for what it is," says Oculus founder

Oculus head Palmer Luckey believes the price of his company's Rift VR headset is "obscenely cheap for what it is."

Speaking on Twitter, Luckey noted that "high-end VR is expensive," but even with the $600 price point, the company isn't "making money on Rift hardware."

He also touched upon the price differences between regions which he assured the public wasn't "artificially bloated." In the UK and Europe, the headset will cost customers £499/€699 and as high as $920 in Australia.

"We have to cover the required taxes," he said. "Sales tax in USA works differently as we have per state sales tax. In fact, some countries are getting a slightly better deal than the US, all things considered."

A few industry analysts have weighed in on the price point for the device, with Robert W. Baird & Co's Colin Sebastian stating the $600 price was on the "high end" of the company's expectations which "seems to validate a slow ramp expectation for high-end VR." The price may attract early adopters, but the analyst feels Google Cardboard and Gear VR will gain faster momentum with standard customers.

Within minutes, early shipments of Rift sold out, pushing the initial ship date from March into May. According to Luckey, some customers could see their shipping date moved up, once "fraudulent" orders are weeded out, which is honestly something to be expected.

"Some people may see their ship date move forward as fraudulent orders in the queue are weeded out," he said. "We are experiencing insanely high load. Credit card processing is trying to stay live under load from mass script kiddie fraud attempts.

"Apologies to the handful of people with order issues - the vast majority are going through fine - supporting the cracks as best we can."

Rift was made available for pre-order earlier today, and the box it comes in includes the Oculus remote, cables, a sensor, wireless Xbox One controller and an adapter so the controller can be used with Windows 10 to stream Xbox One games to the headset.

It also comes with the games Eve: Valkyrie and Lucky’s Tale.

Those who pre-order Rift are also reserving themselves a spot for Rift's Touch controller which releases during the second half of this year.

Thanks, GI.biz.