Has the VR revolution stalled before it started?

The price of Oculus Rift was a reality check for VR proponents. The revolution may start this year, but it's difficult to imagine it reaching the broad masses just yet. Not with a cover fee of £500 (plus £1,000+ for a compatible computer). Perhaps the best chance of going fully mass market in 2016 lies with PlayStation VR, as the initial investment in hardware (PS4) is far lower than what's required to run Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.

We don't yet know how much Sony will charge for their headset, but we would be surprised if it's more expensive than Oculus Rift; given that Sony owns the ecosystem they can rely on more earnings as a result of selling the hardware whereas the market space for PC games is far more complicated (and Oculus will not have a sizeable percentage cut of every game bought for the headset). Then again, Sony are in a position where they can ill afford to sell anything at a loss, and it is unlikely that PlayStation VR will come across as "cheap", even if the Oculus Rift price tag will help.

Oculus Rift and a pair of Oculus Touch controllers make for the perfect photo opp.

While Oculus are guilty of some truly atrocious communication here's a hint - don't say it will be "around" or "more than" $350 if you know it will be $600. Of course, while $600 is technically "more than" $350, no sane person who hears that it will be "more than $350" thinks it will be priced at $600. They set themselves up for this reaction, and while pre-orders are doing well (at least according to Oculus, there are naturally no impartial indicators) it is a completely avoidable situation they now find themselves in.

But in the greater scheme of things it's a move that makes sense. Oculus are working with Samsung on Gear VR, a cheap entry level into VR - so it makes sense to have the Rift be a true premium product. It is also (hopefully) a safeguard about one of the major concerns anyone should have with spending £500 on a Rift this spring. How long will it be until it is replaced by a superior version? And how long will it be fully supported? Will you be able to play the most advanced VR games on PC in 2018 with this version of Oculus Rift. It's hard to tell, and clearly Oculus aren't in complete control of what will happen, or how developers will choose to support older kits. Clearly the better the components, the better the chances are that your Oculus Rift will stand the test of time, but there are no guarantees as to how quickly the technology will become out of date.

For now Oculus Rift will be something that enthusiasts with deep pockets will enjoy. Whether there are enough enthusiasts out there to sustain a healthy market and enable cost cutting down the line, in doing so opening more mass market opportunities, remains to be seen.

There is a fair amount of scepticism directed towards VR in the gaming community. And from a business point of view this is perfectly valid. Peripherals have a dark history in gaming and very few have managed to be successful both commercially and from a gaming perspective. There are also some outright haters. We can discuss how many of them have actually sampled the consumer ready versions of PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but that's really beside the point. There is a resistance to something new and different. "This is not how I want to play games, and so it stands to reason that no-one else could possibly want to". Ridiculous notion, of course.

It's great for all aspects of gaming that new things are tested and explored. The fact that we enjoy a game of Pong doesn't exclude us from being tempted by a gaming future inside of a holodeck. I'm sure we would enjoy a game of Pong inside a holodeck to think of it, even if there's nothing like turning those dials on an original machine. Let's not spend time on the haters, but let's be clear about the fact that there is some resistance, whether it's a healthy scepticism towards the business prospects or a reluctance to embrace something new and different. But fair enough, all avenues of gaming aren't for all people.

The full SteamVR + HTC Vive experience.

One thing that Oculus Rift's price point does is that it takes a lot of pressure off the competition. While Valve and HTC always seemed to have the more expensive package with the lighthouse boxes and SteamVR controllers in addition to the headset, maybe now they can come out within a competitive pricing range, depending on how they'll bundle and package their various hardware. For Sony things are naturally looking up. While the actual PlayStation VR headset may very well be priced close to what Oculus Rift retails for (Sony hasn't been shy about pricing in the past), but at least they're not going to be seriously undercut by a competitor fuelled by Facebook money.

The fact that there are 36 million PS4 units on the market (for reference, Nvidia estimates there are going to be 13 million Oculus-ready computers by the launch of the Rift), and that the price of a PS4 is significantly lower than a VR-ready computer, is a competitive edge as the VR race begins. Even without an official price announced pre-orders are stacking up, and we would be genuinely surprised if PlayStation VR isn't the biggest VR platform as 2016 concludes (the only caveat is if they go for a price significantly higher than Oculus Rift). Valve and HTC are the wild card. What we've tried has been great, but where it is easy to see how Oculus and Sony are positioning their respective products it remains a mystery exactly what Valve and HTC have up their sleeves. Is there a VR killer app in development at Valve? How far will they push the concept of the lighthouse boxes, something that could rule out more users than any demanding system requirements might?

Speaking of wild cards, it is hard to see the "indie" alternative of OSVR (open-source VR), which is being supported by an official Razer product, competing head-to-head with the big boys. But who knows? Maybe the open source model is more attractive to the core audience? Further ahead we have potential challenger like Starbreeze Studios' StarVR, that from a technology point of view offers something slightly different and impressed us when we first sampled it. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, because right now we're at the threshold of something.

The PlayStation VR looks very sleek and is easily the most user friendly model we've sampled.

There is still a lot of uncertainty as gaming looks to expand its borders in 2016 and fully embrace VR. The technology is impressive, but is there a big enough market to support £500 headsets? We don't know, but it will be exciting to follow nonetheless - gaming needs constant change, broadening, and evolution, or else we'd all still be playing Pong with paddles. What really breaks out and becomes mainstream, however, is harder to predict.

See below for our E3 impressions after having tried a number of the competing products.