After a report today claiming that Meta’s upcoming Project Cambria headset would be priced at $ 800, rather than dismissing the information as a rumor, the company took the strange step of confirming that the headset would be much more expensive.
A report by The information today, citing an internal roadmap, claimed that Meta plans to release four new VR headsets by 2024. The first would be Project Cambria, the report says, at a cost of around $ 800.
Now that there is a leak like this, companies will simply refuse to comment on any of it. In this case, Meta took the somewhat strange step of pretty much doing it except to address a single point.
It tells a spokesman for the company The road to VR the price of $ 800 for Project Cambria, as the report claims, is not correct, and moreover, the actual price of the headset will be “significantly higher.”
It’s a strange move, but it looks like Meta did not want the report to put a false expectation on the price of the headset, which is expected to be launched later this year.
We have known from the bits Meta has previously shared that Project Cambria would not aim for the lowest possible cost as Quest. But it’s a bit surprising that the company says that the actual price will “significantly” exceed $ 800.
If the reported price of $ 800 was within $ 100 or even $ 200 of the actual price, it does not appear that it would be such a great deal. But because the company took the strange step of not doing so just to say ‘the price is wrong’, but also to add that it will be higher, leads us to believe that the real price will definitely exceed $ 1,000.
It’s definitely expensive for a standalone VR headset, but not unheard of. HTC’s Vive Focus 3 – which is aimed at corporate customers – is priced at $ 1,300. If Meta sees itself competing for the same customers, they may aim to get close to that price (if not a little below).
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Interestingly, the episode is reminiscent of something that happened in the early Oculus days before the company was deeply preoccupied with Meta. Back in 2015, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said the launch price of the original Oculus Rift headset would be “roughly in [the $350] ball field. ” But when the headset’s price was officially revealed at $ 600, almost double the ‘ballpark’ price, people were not happy.
This was before the launch of the Oculus Touch, the headset’s motion controllers; Later, when someone asked Luckey what the price of ‘ballpark’ would be for Touch, he remarked, “no more ball fields for now. I’ve learned my lesson.”
Whether it’s a long-forgotten memory for Meta or not, the company must have felt that it was quite important to get ahead of the Project Cambria price discussion before it got out of their hands.