Facebook's Oculus slashes price of VR set

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Facebook's virtual reality company Oculus has cut the price of its hardware.

This is a temporary price slash as the company wants to figure out why the technology for immersive games and stories has not taken off among consumers.

The combined price of its Rift headset and Touch controllers falls to 399 US dollars for six weeks beginning on Monday, said Jason Rubin, Oculus vice president for content. That matches the price of another virtual reality set, PlayStation VR, made by its competitor, Sony Corp.

A man wears a Sony Corp. PlayStation VR headset. /VCG Photo

Vive, another mainstream virtual reality set developed by HTC Corp, is listed for sale at 799 US dollars on its website, and it has not recently cut the price.

Oculus was acquired by the California-based social media giant in 2014 with three billion US dollars.

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time that the medium, which offers a 360-degree panoramic view through headsets, would "become a part of daily life for billions of people."

That has not happened, although it is unclear if that is because of high prices, something inherent in the technology or some other reason.

A man plays with HTC Vive during the Mobile World Congress, on 28, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. /VCG Photo

Pricing discounts are sometimes a sign of weak product sales. Rubin, though, said in an interview that was not the case with Oculus, which he said could have cut the price sooner but wanted to wait until there were enough games, movies and other entertainment to keep a broad audience busy.

The pace of game releases has quickened, making a wider appeal possible, Rubin said: "We're now in a space where the mass market can be much happier."

Another setback was a 500 million US dollars legal judgment against Oculus in February, when a jury found in favor of video game publisher ZeniMax Media Inc in a lawsuit accusing Facebook and Oculus of copyright infringement. Oculus has asked for a new trial.

(Source: Reuters)