Oculus founder Palmer Luckey: we’re still not competing with Sony and HTC

It’s been three years since we saw the Oculus Rift for the first time at CES — it won our Best in Show award in both 2013 and 2014. Now, it’s on the cusp of seeing a final consumer release. We sat down with Oculus founder Palmer Luckey the day after Rift preorders opened, and for the first time in years, we didn’t have to ask him about pricing and release dates. Instead, we got to hear his take on the state of VR at CES, the best way to interact with virtual worlds, the future of augmented reality, and why Oculus still isn’t in competition with other headset makers.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of people who would have bought a high-end PC and a Rift that decide to buy a PlayStation VR headset instead. I think people who have PlayStation, honestly, that’s almost certainly what they’re going to choose,” he says. “If they do invest everything in a Rift, it’s because they want to have a higher quality experience and they’re willing to pay for it. But I don’t think there’s a mass market of people who are necessarily willing to do that. It doesn’t really become a competition until it becomes a zero-sum game.” Instead, right now, it’s “all of us together, against the public perception of virtual reality that’s been built up over the decades.”