Last October Oculus announced its ‘Oculus Rift for Business‘ bundle, offering for the first time a package which included a warranty and license officially sanctioned for commercial use. This week the company dropped the price of the package and announced availability in four new regions, but China still isn’t on the list.

HTC began offering its own business bundle, the ‘Vive Business Edition’ for $1,200, back in mid 2016, and appears to have taken a strong lead over Oculus in the out-of-home sector. It wasn’t until more than a year later that Oculus followed suite with its own business bundle, which includes the Rift headset, Touich controllers, three sensors  extra face cushions, cables, preferential customer support, and a warranty & license allowing for commercial usage.

This week the company announced a price cut of the Oculus Rift for Business bundle from $900 to $800, apparently in an effort to be more competitive against the Vive Business Edition ($1,300) and Vive Pro ($1,600 for the full enterprise package), the latter of which crucially offers an even larger tracking area, making it more suitable for some out-of-home use-cases.

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Alongside the price drop, Oculus is now shipping their business bundle to Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and Taiwan, in addition to 17 prior regions. The company is still not offering the bundle (or even the consumer version of the Rift) in China, which has seen a lot of activity in the out-of-home VR space. That policy has made HTC the de facto choice of headset for high-end out-of-home VR deployments in the area.

In addition to the Rift for Business bundle, Oculus also offers a ‘Go for Business’ bundle, a similar commercially focused package for their standalone Go headset.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Mateusz Pawluczuk

    Out of home VR arcades are typically a bit less price concious, saving few hundred bucks might not be your top priority when you have to furnish the whole place, put HDTV on walls, pay your staff. Still it’s a good move, any extra competition helps get things moving.

  • jeff courtney

    That business edition would be a great way to start a vr business.Its still a barely tapped frontier.Many gamers also can’t afford vr so to demo vr as a business in small store fronts or malls would be excellent start up companies.Praise Jesus!

  • Kenji Fujimori

    Zuckerberg Rift

  • Lucidfeuer

    When a company copies another company’s stupid moves, it’s very bad signs for the market.

    The reason why we go for Oculus, is specifically because we don’t want a bulky, ugly, unpractical “business” edition…

    • JJ

      uh what? lol “You” may go to oculus for that reason but thats not the case for the rest of us.

    • Caven

      What?

      Like the Vive, the Oculus business edition is nothing more than the consumer version headset with improved customer support and licensing for business use, along with the inclusion of a few accessories that are normally optional with the consumer version. Neither company is altering the design of their headsets for business use. Unless you’re counting the little bit of blue paint used on the Vive business edition markings, all the bulkiness, ugliness, and impracticality of the business editions of both headsets already exists in the consumer versions.

  • I think that Vive is better than Rift for commercial use, especially thanks to the better tracking technology. When Knuckles will arrive, this choice will be even more evident.

  • VR Roundtable

    You do know that this so called Business version doesn’t actually give you the rights to use their hardware in an arcade right? Here’s what it says in the fine print of their commercial license:

    “For clarity, included as part of the prohibition of using content from the Oculus Store, this License does not authorize you to use the Products with content from the Oculus Store in arcades, PC cafes, VR theaters, or any other commercial use where multiple end users access Oculus Store content under a shared Oculus ID (collectively, “Arcades”). Use of Oculus Store content in Arcades requires a separate license from Oculus and separate commercial licenses from the respective content owners. However, you may use the Products in Arcades with content that is not offered on the Oculus Store if you create the content yourself or separately obtain commercial licenses from the content owners.”

    • JJ

      wait what…. You’re saying hardware and thats saying Oculus store content which are different things completely. It’s common sense that you have to buy licensed editions of content for arcades, this is not news.

      that says you cannot use the “Oculus store content” in these places, and again from the paragraph you quoted, mentions nothing about the “hardware”, and even further speaks of licenses for content….

      You very much can use their hardware in an arcade, its the sharing of bought content from the store thats the issue.

      I feel like im missing something because that paragraph you quoted doesn’t say the word hardware anywhere yet thats what you’re talking about. So either im missing something or you just dont know that hardware and content are completely different.

      • JJ

        I can see from your other comments that you say
        “The business version doesn’t actually give you the rights to have gamers play any games from the Oculus Store in your VR Arcade. You can only play Steam games.”
        Which is the correct statement, but your original post is still highlighting hardware when its the content thats whats not allowed, but you obviously know this.

      • VR Roundtable

        Yeah, I should have worded it a bit different, my bad. The funny thing is, I know there are people buying these so called “business versions”, thinking that it actually gives them the rights to use an Oculus Rift and put people into stuff like Robo Recall and Lone Echo. You don’t need to buy a “business” version for any legal reason. You can buy a standard Rift or standard Vive, and there is nothing Oculus or HTC can do to stop you. Once you own the hardware, it’s your hardware.

    • It does allow you to use the headset just not their content “with content from the Oculus Store”

      • JJ

        you summed up my shitty written paragraphs into one sentence.

        ignore my crap below

      • VR Roundtable

        Well, technically, you don’t need to buy a “business” version of an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive to use it in a VR Arcade. Once you own the hardware, you can do anything you want to with it, HTC and Oculus can’t stop you. They can encourage you to buy their special business version, but there isn’t any legal reason that you need to do that. You’re basically paying extra money for almost no good reason.The only reason to buy a “business” version is for the better warranty, but considering HTC’s horrible customer service record, I personally would put the money towards a backup Vive instead. I’m not sure about Oculus’s warranty service.

  • VR Roundtable

    See my comment above. The business version doesn’t actually give you the rights to have gamers play any games from the Oculus Store in your VR Arcade. You can only play Steam games.

    • R FC

      Thanks for the clarification, very interesting information. Looking at the high throughput of an arcade, perhaps the vive is a better choice anyhow? The product has a more industrial/robust finish which should withstand wear and tear better? I say this as a former owner of 2 Vive’s where I put alot of people through “VR virgin” sessions, the aftermarket face covers were super useful and the headset/controller were super easy to clean. The Rift always struck me as a much more ‘refined’ design with more delicate finish perhaps better for personal use?

    • Caven

      Actually, that wouldn’t be legal either, and the same principle applies to the Vive. The license agreement for the headset doesn’t allow a person to simply override the preexisting license agreements for software developed by 3rd parties. If you bought a Blu-ray player that came with a license agreement explicitly allowing you to use it for public exhibition of movies, that doesn’t nullify the provisions that each of your Blu-ray movies have prohibiting that exact thing.

      If you want to use VR hardware for public exhibition of games, you’re going to have to obtain special licensing for that, either by making your own software, or entering into a commercial use agreement with a software developer.

      • VR Roundtable

        Yes, you obviously have to license each individual game. Even “free” games. Unless the Publisher/Developer have given their specific blessing that it can be used sans any license like The Lab.