In a Reddit AMA, Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey answered the pivotal question of why the Oculus Rift is priced at $599 and not, as he stated earlier at an Oculus Connect developer conference, "roughly in that $350 ballpark."
Essentially, Luckey admits that he "handled the messaging poorly":
As an explanation, not an excuse: during that time, many outlets were repeating the "Rift is $1500" line, and I was frustrated by how many people thought that was the price of the headset itself. My answer was ill-prepared, and mentally, I was contrasting $349 with $1500, not our internal estimate that hovered close to $599 – that is why I said it was in roughly the same ballpark.
Since then, he's attempted to make sure that people understand that $349 was a bit optimistic:
Later on, I tried to get across that the Rift would cost more than many expected, in the past two weeks particularly. There are a lot of reasons we did not do a better job of prepping people who already have high end GPUs, legal, financial, competitive, and otherwise, but to be perfectly honest, our biggest failing was assuming we had been clear enough about setting expectations.Another problem is that people looked at the much less advanced technology in DK2 for $350 and assumed the consumer Rift would cost a similar amount, an assumption that myself (and Oculus) did not do a good job of fixing. I apologize.
When asked what the Oculus Rift's Touch Controllers will cost, he replied, "No more ballparks for now. I have learned by lesson."
