With this morning's revelation that the Oculus Rift VR headset would sell for $599, many potential customers and industry observers experienced some sticker shock. Where was the consumer unit "in the ballpark" of the $350 DK2 dev kit that Oculus founder CEO Palmer Luckey talked about as recently as October?

In a Reddit AMA interview tonight , Luckey apologized for that comment and for "assuming we had been clear enough about setting expectations" for the headset's price. "I handled the messaging poorly," Luckey said plainly in the AMA thread.

Defending the company to some extent, Luckey pointed to comments from last May, when Oculus executives started saying that the Oculus Rift and a capable PC would cost $1,500 combined (Oculus will indeed start selling pre-orders for the Rift bundled with "Oculus ready" PCs for that price in February). That should have set accurate expectations for most potential Rift owners, Luckey said. "For that vast majority of people, $1,500 is the all-in cost of owning Rift. The biggest portion of their cost is the PC, not the Rift itself."

Those that already have a capable gaming PC, though, probably expected a price closer to the DK2's $350 based on Luckey's "in the ballpark" statement. Luckey explained that statement was an "ill-prepared" reaction to some outlets inaccurately reporting that $1,500 was the price of the Rift headset on its own. In his head at the time, Luckey says, he was trying to highlight how the expected $599 price for the headset was closer to that $350 dev kit than to a $1,500 price.

"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," Luckey said. "I usually try to underpromise and overdeliver, and I need to hold myself to that better in the future," he said in answer to another question.

Why so pricey?

As Luckey has explained in other interviews, the difference in price between the lower-priced dev kits and the consumer version comes down to new features ("back of head tracking, headphones, mic, removable facial interfaces, etc.") and component quality. "The unfortunate reality we discovered is that making a VR product good enough to deliver presence and eliminate discomfort was not really feasible at the lower prices of earlier dev kits that used mostly off the shelf hardware," he said in the AMA. "For Rift, we’re using largely custom VR technology (eg. custom displays designed for VR) to push the experience well beyond DK2 to the Crescent Bay level."

Even at $599, Luckey says Oculus is not making a profit on the Rift hardware. The majority of that cost comes from "two built-for-VR OLED displays with very high refresh rate and pixel density; a very precise tracking system; mechanical adjustment systems that must be lightweight, durable, and precise; and cutting-edge optics that are more complex to manufacture than many high-end DSLR lenses."

Luckey added that what some are calling "useless extras" like the Xbox One controller and high-end audio in the included headphones don't appreciably contribute to that cost. "We could have released a lower quality product and saved one or two hundred bucks, but the all-in cost for the average consumer (including PC) would not have budged significantly."

"It is expensive, but for the $599 you spend, you get a lot more than spending $599 on pretty much any other consumer electronics devices," Luckey added in defending the price. "Phones that cost $599 cost a fraction of that to make, same with mid-range TVs that cost $599. There are a lot of mainstream devices in that price-range, so as you have said, our failing was in communication, not just price."

Those hoping for the Rift to come down in price quickly after launch may be unhappy to hear that Luckey thinks we're unlikely to see a "stripped down SKU" for this first-generation consumer product. "A standardized system is in the best interest [of] developers trying to reach the widest audience, and we cannot significantly reduce the cost without dramatically reducing quality." That doesn't mean the Rift will never be discounted, but it does mean that any cost reductions likely won't come from removing or significantly changing components.

Elsewhere in the AMA, Luckey noted that the recommended hardware spec for a Rift-capable PC "won’t necessarily be able to play all games at MAX settings," but "will be able to play everything in the Oculus store at a high quality level (90 FPS)." While some apps (like movie viewers) will run on lower-spec machines, less capable hardware won't be officially supported by Oculus, "especially since many low-end cards are physically unable to output the framerate and resolution required for the hardware to operate."

Asked to give a ballpark price range for the upcoming Oculus Touch hand-tracking controllers, Luckey demurred. "No more ballparks for now. I have learned my lesson."