Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe says the Oculus Rift could be free one day if the company happens upon the right business model.
Speaking with Edge, Iribe says that the company is looking to make the Rift's price point as low as possible, to reduce the obvious barriers which keep a niche hardware device like VR out of reach of most consumers.
"The lower the price point, the wider the audience," says Iribe. "We're sitting there thinking all the time, how can we make this free? You want everybody to play it and the cheaper it is, the more people are going to go out and buy it."
The Oculus Rift currently exists only as a $300 (U.S.) devkit, which is also the current target price for the eventual retail version. However, Oculus VR is looking at alternatives. And while the notion of giving away the headset for free is probably a pipe dream, enough early adopters would eventually drive manufacturing costs down enough to make production significantly cheaper -- as with any hardware.
"Let's say there was some game you played in VR that everybody loved and everybody played and we made $100 a month -- or even $10 a month -- at some point the hardware's cheap enough," Iribe offered.
But, he added: "We're not there yet."
