$1,500 is how much Facebook is charging for the new Oculus headset.

Just to provide perspective on the competition.

• $500 was the launch price for the PlayStation 5.
• $500 was the launch price of the Xbox One.
• $300 was the launch price of the Nintendo Switch.

The Oculus, which is focused on VR and is a single unit system wants to sell for more over the three most popular gaming systems combined.

Which to be fair, Facebook has a cheaper version of the Oculus with the Quest 2, that sells for $400-500 and has been pretty successful, selling 15 million units in just the Christmas season last year. With about 20-25 million Oculus sets sold, that’s actually a really underrated success, selling over 5x what Sony sold for PSVR and it means they’ve already outsold the original Xbox, which moved 24 million units, losing four billion dollars before Xbox 360.

Oculus, despite a lot of pretty bitter media reports has been a success, but the question is there an actual demand for VR, where a $1,500 price point works?

Looking at the most expensive gaming console release, there’s a history lesson here.

The most expensive gaming console ever released was the 3DO system, which was the first mass market gaming system to bring CD games to consumers as well as fully 3D graphics.

Problem was it launched in 1993, with a price point of $700.

Adjusted for inflation, that’d be a little over $1,400 today, meaning the new Oculus still is more expensive.

Which Mark Zuckerberg is saying Oculus is more about gaming, but so did 3DO, mentioning it had potential for early DVD’s, trying to say it a was a full on entertainment system.

People didn’t bite and it flopped, selling only two million units.

Mark Zuckerberg is more interested in selling Oculus as a computer, but the marketing has primarily showed examples similar to gaming.

If this is an attempt to be a new type of PC, it does make some sense, looking at Apple, which launched the Apple 2 in 1977 for $1,300, which would be $5,800 today.

The Apple 2 did okay, but initially it only really sold with hobbyist and early gamers. It wasn’t until VisiCalc was introduced as the first electronic spreadsheet in 1979, where every hedge fund, bank, accounting firm and other companies began buying, selling 300,000 units almost right after.

Oculus and VR haven’t really showed proof they’ll get that kind of B2B interest, which again puts them as a gaming system.

This is why it’s pretty likely Oculus will probably see stronger sales with the $400-500 price model, instead of aiming for a $1,500 device that it’s unlikely only some gaming companies, higher income tech people and some arcades end up buying.

That said though, the bigger question is why are people acting like Oculus is a failure and Mark Zuckerberg doomed his company?

• Outsold the original Xbox.
• New to market product, reaching tens of millions.
• The most downloaded app between Christmas Day 2021 and the first day of 2022.

Very likely it’s this stigma against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook as a company, but also Facebook giving this vague explanation of VR and the metaverse, fixating on it as something which isn’t a gaming system.

If the goal was just saying “We’re going to sell 200 million VR headsets and getting everyone playing Fortnite in VR”, I think almost everyone would understand.

They’ve instead confused it, where Mark Zuckerberg markets these awful use cases which hit me personally as the creations of older millennials building things they think Gen Z will find fun and aren’t.

That puts the final thoughts really being that Mark Zuckerberg needs to end his time as the mascot for VR and just poach some employees from Gamefreak to make the next Sonic the Hedgehog or Pikachu for the age of virtual reality.