Like many gamers, I am looking forward to the arrival of Virtual Reality or V.R. gaming and the potential of this bold new frontier in gaming. Having tested the units most recently at PAX Prime and discussed on our radio show segment, we debated that benefits of being an early adopter vs waiting for costs to come down, available titles to increase, and for a possible dominant format to arrive.
At the same PAX Show we also had a discussion with EVGA about which video cards a staffer should update to. After a good discussion he opted for a 960 GTX as he was told that while the 970 is a better card, if you are not going to be playing 4K gaming until the price of 4K monitors drop, then the 960 is your best bet.
Flash forward to March where a rep at NVIDIA told me that a 970 series card would be the minimum requirement and with a reported $600 price for Oculus, and $799. For the HTC Vive, some hard decisions were ahead.
I told him based on the cost of a decent video card to play VR on and the cost of the units, you are in for close to or over 1K depending on what you purchase and you still have not even selected your first game.
That is more than some gamers spend getting on parts to assemble their rig and is a big outlay for people. He asked what I plan to do and I told him that I would be getting the Playstation VR at launch and would wait on the other formats, as for me; it was the best decision.
While a price has not been announced for the Playstation VR, we have heard reports that it will be “console” priced. I took this to be between $399 and $599. If it is on the higher end, it is in keeping with the cost of the Oculus. The difference is that for him and many other gamers, that is the only expense they will have to go to VR as if they own a Playstation 4, they already have the required system hardware and will not need to worry about updating their video card or system to enter the VR world.
I also said that for many gamers, the estimated cost of the Playstation VR and a PS4 system would still be under either of the two VR systems and a new video card should a gamer require that to play, and as such, this is for me a wiser investment at launch especially when I can see Sony having a bundle which would drive down the costs even further.
I have enjoyed playing all three systems and each has solid potential, but when you factor in price, for me it seems like a no-brainer for any gamer who would need to update to go the Playstation VR route and wait for the price of a needed video card, the Oculus, and the HTC Vive, to decrease before making their purchase. This also has the added bonus of allowing a user to see which format is becoming the most dominant, has the best game support, and functionality. Since we know that Sony has a large catalog of games coming for their system and hopefully some older games like Alien Isolation will be supported, it just seems to me like the wiser investment for many would be the Playstation VR.
