Oculus announced via its blog overnight that the Rift VR headset bundled with hand-tracking Touch controllers will now cost just $399, half the price the company was charging for that same hardware package less than five months ago. The "limited time" price is being offered as part of an ongoing "Summer of Rift" promotion that also includes heavy discounts on Oculus games [Update: Oculus says the discount will last for six weeks].

It was only March 1 when the Rift headset alone saw its first major price drop to $499, after launching at $599 roughly a year before . At that time, the optional Oculus Touch controllers also dropped from $199 to $99, less than four months after their release last December

Today's further 33 percent reduction in the price of a Rift/Touch hardware bundle makes high-end, PC-based VR a good deal more affordable than it was just last year. Back then, it cost at least $1,500 to go "all in" on a basic Oculus Ready PC bundled with the Rift headset, before the Touch controllers were even available. Today, you could get a similar barebones "Oculus Ready" system" with the Rift headset and Touch controllers for $1,000 or less.

Why the sudden price cut?

Such a severe price reduction, coming so soon after the company's first price drop in March, could signal that Oculus is having trouble moving Rift headsets and/or Touch controllers in sufficient volume (even if Oculus advertises the new price as being for a "limited time"). While the Rift was back-ordered for months as early adopters snapped up initial pre-orders at $599 last year, anecdotal reports suggest retail interest has waned in recent months.

Analysts at SuperData estimated the Rift had sold about 240,000 units through the beginning of February, well behind sales estimates for both the cheaper PlayStation VR and the more expensive HTC Vive (not to mention less powerful mobile-based competition).

[Update: Reuters paraphrases an interview with Jason Rubin in which the Oculus vice president for content said the price reduction is not a sign of weak sales. Rubin went on to say the company "could have cut the price sooner but wanted to wait until there were enough games, movies, and other entertainment to keep a broad audience busy," as Reuters puts it.]

Today's price drop may simply reflect the lowered cost of components that are now over a year older and likely being produced at more significant scale. The original Oculus Rift headset is approaching the 18-month transistor doubling/price-halving point suggested by some versions of Moore's Law.

Last January, Oculus Co-founder Palmer Luckey said the company wasn't making a profit on the hardware at its initial $599 price. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Oculus-parent Facebook, said in February that the company's VR effort is "not going to be profitable for quite a while," a statement that came just before the Rift hardware received its March price drop. That's in contrast to the SteamVR-powered HTC Vive, which is still sold for a profit at the same $800 price at which it launched.

A signal for new hardware?

For comparison, video game consoles usually take an average of three to four years to drop to 50 percent of their original asking price, though many counterexamples can be found on either side of that mean. The Xbox One hit a $250 price just under three years after launching at $499 with a bundled Kinect camera (which is no longer part of the console's default package). The Sega Saturn, on the other hand, dropped to $199 just a year after launching at $399.

Perhaps the current Rift design is seeing its price cut in advance of the announcement of a potential "Rift 2.0." Oculus' then-CEO Brendan Iribe told Ars in 2014 that he expected the second consumer version of the Rift to come a year or two after the first. "That's when we think the scale will really goal, and hopefully you'll get many millions of people into VR, playing great games and other stuff," Iribe said at the time.

Oculus' fourth annual Connect convention in October could provide a good opportunity to announce new hardware. At last year's event, the company showcased a prototype wireless version of the Rift that used "inside-out" tracking embedded in the unit itself, rather than tracking via cameras connected to a tethered PC.