Oculus CEO Says They Would Love to Give Headsets Away for Free

When showing off a prototype of the Rift HD headset at Develop 2013, Oculus revealed that they are looking at strategies to get the goggles in as much homes as possible.

Speaking with Edge, CEO Brendan Iribe said that even though the Oculus Rift will launch at $300, the team are looking at ways to bring that price down to a more affordable figure:

 “The lower the price point, the wider the audience,” he said. “We have all kinds of fantasy ideas. We’d love it to be free one day, so how do we get it as close to free as possible? Obviously it won’t be that in the beginning. We’re targeting the $300 price point right now but there’s the potential that it could get much less expensive with a few different relationships and strategies.

You can imagine if Microsoft and Sony can go out and subsidise consoles because there’s enough money to be made on software and other areas, then there’s the potential that this, in partnership, could get subsidised. Let’s say there was some game you played in VR that everybody loved and everybody played and we made $100 a month – or even $10 a month – at some point the hardware’s cheap enough and we’re making enough that we could be giving away the headset.”

If there’s one way to get onside with the general public, this is it. I really doubt we’ll ever see the Oculus Rift as a free peripheral on console, or otherwise, but a more manageable price would definitely be appreciated.