Facebook is cutting the price of its Oculus Rift headset and Touch controller bundle by $200, the company announced Wednesday.
The bundle will drop from $798 to $598, and the price cut will be applied to each product individually as well. The headset alone will cost $499 and the motion sensors will drop to $99. The Oculus Sensor will cost $59.
The price drop comes almost a year after Oculus first shipped Rift and nearly three years after Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion. At the time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg set a goal of selling 50 to 100 million of Oculus units over the next decade. While there’s no official tally of how many units have sold to date, rumors point to sales well below that goal.
Lowering the price could allow Oculus to tap into a new market with Rift. Virtual reality units mainly attract video gamers at the moment, but a lower price could help them expand to markets such as movies or shows.
Jason Rubin, Oculus’ vice president of content, said in a blog post that the price drop is part of the company’s plan to reach a broader audience.
“We believe this lower entry price will attract consumers to PC VR at a faster pace,” Rubin said. “This is universally good for the entire community, but especially for developers. A larger user base means higher potential sales, easier player matching, better communities, and results in the ability to invest more in titles. This increased investment means better software which in turn brings more consumers.”