So E3 wrapped up a few days ago and I'm still thinking about the PlayStation VR pricing, which Sony dropped during their press conference Monday night. $399, launching October 13th. On paper that's actually less than I expected, everyone was bracing for something closer to $500 or $600 after the Rift and Vive both landed north of that. Oculus is $599 and the Vive is a genuinely brutal $799. So $399 reads like a relief.
Except it isn't really $399, is it.
You need a PlayStation Camera to track the headset, and that's sold separately, it's not bundled. If you already own a PS4 and never bought the camera (which, be honest, most people didn't, I sure didn't, I bought mine for the launch bundle deal and it just sat in a drawer because nothing used it) you're adding another $59.99 on top. Then if you want the Move controllers, which from the demo videos look like they're doing a lot of the actual interaction work, that's another $99.99 for a pair. Do the math and you're suddenly at something like $560 before tax, and that's assuming you already own the PS4 itself. Sony's own math during the keynote conveniently left the camera and Move controllers out of the headline number, which, sure, that's marketing, but it still bugs me a little.
I keep comparing this to the Kinect. Not because the tech is similar, it's not, but because of the pattern: a big platform holder ships a peripheral, promises it'll be everywhere, and then three years later you find it in a box in the closet next to a tangle of HDMI cables. I owned two Kinects. Actively used maybe four games on the second one. I don't say this to be a downer about VR specifically, I actually think the tech is neat when I've tried it (a friend has a DK2 hooked up and Job Simulator is legitimately funny), I'm just skeptical that $560-ish worth of hardware is going to get used past the first month for most people who buy it on launch hype.
Anyway. The other thing from Sony's conference that I can't stop thinking about is the Death Stranding trailer. If you haven't seen it: it's Norman Reedus, naked, on a beach, covered in some kind of translucent goo, cradling a baby that appears to be connected to him by an umbilical cord, and then handcuffed babies wash up dead on the shore and he starts crying black tears. That's it. That's the whole trailer. No release date, barely a logo, just Kojima doing Kojima things now that he's free of Konami. The internet spent about 48 hours making increasingly unhinged theories about what any of it means and I don't think anyone actually knows, possibly including Kojima. I love that this is allowed to exist. A studio with real money behind it (it's a Sony-published thing now) just handed a guy a trailer slot and let him make something completely inscrutable. Most publishers wouldn't greenlight that kind of confusion in a two-minute ad.
Also, quick aside because it happened the same week and I don't want to write a whole separate post reacting to it the way I assume half the tech blogs are going to this month: Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. Twenty six billion. For LinkedIn. I have opinions about this but honestly everyone does right now and I'm not sure mine add anything, so I'll just say: I have a LinkedIn account I log into maybe twice a year, usually because someone endorsed me for a skill I don't have, and I genuinely cannot picture what Microsoft thinks the play is here beyond "enterprise data is valuable." Maybe that's enough of a reason on its own. Twenty six billion dollars worth of reason, apparently.
Back to VR though, I'm not preordering. Not at $560-with-accessories, not in October. I'll wait for the reviews, and honestly I'll probably wait for a price cut, because that's what always happens with this stuff eventually. If you're the type who preorders day one, more power to you, genuinely, someone has to be the early adopter that the rest of us read reviews from. Just budget for the camera.