PlayStation VR’s true cost: $500 when bundled with needed accessories

When Sony finally announced a $400 price tag for its PlayStation VR headset earlier this week, that announcement was incomplete at best and downright misleading at worst. The $400 base package doesn't come with the PlayStation Camera that is required for positional tracking or the PlayStation Move controllers that are required for many of the headset's games.

This morning, Sony announced a more complete bundled package that gets at PlayStation VR's true starting price for most users. For $500 (or C$700) North American players get the PlayStation VR headset (and required cables), a PlayStation Camera, two PlayStation Move wands, and the PlayStation VR Worlds collection of themed mini-games. Even without the game, that number represents a significant savings from the suggested retail price for the Camera ($60) and Move controllers ($50 each), though both accessories often actually retail for much less than those suggested prices.

While there are doubtless some players out there who already have the Camera and/or Move controllers they'll need for PlayStation VR, we can't imagine there are a lot. For evidence, look toward Amazon, where sales for the PS4 Camera increased 3,000 percent in the wake of the PlayStation VR announcement (Move controllers and chargers saw a nearly 1,000 percent sales increase themselves). And while you don't technically need Move controllers for every PSVR game, scrimping on them means missing out on some of the system's most compelling virtual reality experiences.

All in all, you should probably think of $500 as the "base price" to get started with PlayStation VR—a price that rises to $850 when paired with the PlayStation 4 hardware itself. That's not exactly cheap, but it looks relatively thrifty when compared with the $1,500+ "all-in" price for high-end, PC-based virtual reality these days.

The $500 PlayStation VR bundle will be available "exclusively for pre-sale and in limited quantities" starting at 7am PDT on Tuesday, March 22. Another wave of bundle preorders will be made available in the summer, but Sony says the core, $399 PSVR package is not available for preorder.