Playstation VR Will Be the Most Affordable VR Headset Coming This Year

At just $400, it's a bit less than the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive

Sony just announced the final price for its Playstation VR headset at the annual Game Developer's Conference, and the console-compatible headset will be coming this October for a price of just $400.

Yes, that's roughly the cost of a console, but $400 is considerably cheaper than the Rift's $600 pricetag, or the HTC Vive's hefty $800 price. What's more, Playstation VR doesn't require a $1,000 PC to use, just a Playstation 4. 

While the low price point is great for anyone who is looking to dip into virtual reality at a higher level than Samsung's Gear VR without jumping all the way to a ~$1,500 purchase, Playstation VR is bound to have its drawbacks. 

Current generation consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One are already known for being underpowered compared to PCs, and the gap will only be more noticeable in VR, where the performance requirements are incredibly high. The PS4 will have to do twice as much work on graphics for VR—one stream for each eyes. Meanwhile glitches in frame-rate aren't a huge deal on a TV but are well-known for making headset wearers sick. PS VR does come with an additional, external processing unit that should help out, though.  

Playstation VR also doesn't come with any sort of motion controller. So far, the HTC Vive is the only headset that comes with a pair of wands. Oculus Touch—the special controllers for the Rift—will be available separately later this fall. Previous demos of Playstation VR have made use of the Playstation's "Move" controllers to simulate hands, but the lack of a pack-in means that most of its games will probably rely on a controller.

How Playstation VR will measure up to its competitors still remains to be seen, and won't be totally clear until we see it in action—many of the tech's inital demos ran on PC instead of actual Playstation hardware. But if it can measure up to its contemporaries, that price will be hard to beat. 

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
More From Best New Gadgets