Oculus CEO thinks VR headsets could eventually be free with subsidies

At $300, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset isn’t exactly breaking the bank. (Especially compared to alternatives from more established companies.) But CEO Brendan Iribe wants to get it lower still — possibly even free, if he can find the right business model. Speaking to Edge, Iribe said, “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 and we’re making enough that we could be giving away the headset.”

With companies like Microsoft and Sony selling consoles cheaply and making up their investments in software licensing, Iribe thinks there’s room in the industry for some more inventive approaches to hardware sales. The headset could be bundled with laptops for instance, or come free as part of a software subscription service.