Oculus Rift to be cheaper thanks to Facebook

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will be cheaper thanks to Oculus being bought by Facebook, according to company CEO Brendan Iribe.

Virtual reality became big news earlier this year when Facebook spent $2billion USD to acquire Oculus.

Originally the headset was going to be sold for more when it hit the consumer market, but now Iribe claims it can go on sale for less due to Facebook's support.

"I think [the buyout] is going to allow us to deliver consumer V1 at a lower cost, because we're not trying to drive a high margin on this," he told ArsTechnica.

"[Facebook CEO] Mark [Zuckerberg], especially, wants to bring the cost down, him more than me.

"Mark is much more in the mindset of 'Let's get this to scale with the best quality product at the lowest cost possible.'"

Oculus is hoping the first consumer version of the Rift shifts over 1million units and that it becomes available before the end of 2015.

"As that kind of comes together, we have the hardware in place for consumer V1, and there's a lot of content, and there's a platform and an ecosystem for people to be able to monetise, that will all come together for a consumer V1," he added.

"There's a lot of rich content being made, but we need a lot more of it."