Technologies

Why Apple Vision Pro’s $3,500 Price Makes More Sense Than You Think

Commentary: Apple’s first headset is too expensive for most people. But there are a few reasons why it isn’t so farfetched.

Apple announced its long-awaited Vision Pro mixed reality headset at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, signaling its first major new product in almost a decade. The problem? You’ll have to pay $3,500 to try it.

That’s a lot (even for Apple), sparking a deluge of Twitter memes and a collective groan from the audience present at Apple’s conference.

Behind those jokes, there’s a valid point. At $3,500, Apple’s Vision Pro costs more than three weeks worth of pay for the average American, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. It’s also significantly more expensive than rival devices like the upcoming $500 Meta Quest 3, $550 Sony PlayStation VR 2 and even the $1,000 Meta Quest Pro.

It tops many other Apple products in terms of price too. Buying an iPhone 14 Pro Max, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro and an Apple Watch Ultra would still be cheaper than an Apple Vision Pro (although it comes fairly close.) Shipments of virtual and augmented reality headsets also plummeted in 2022, according to International Data Corporation statistics published in March, adding to the skepticism.

In an interview Tuesday with ABC News’ Good Morning America, Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the headset’s price when asked if the average person would be able to afford it.

«I think people will make different choices depending upon their current financial situation,» he said.

To call Apple’s new headset expensive may be an understatement. But once you step back and look at the larger picture beyond the initial sticker shock, that eye-watering price starts to make a little sense.

Vision Pro’s price is comparable to a high-end Mac

Despite Vision Pro’s high price, it’s far from being the most expensive computer Apple sells. There’s another Apple computer that’s roughly double the price, the $6,999 Mac Pro, which just got its first major refresh since 2019 at WWDC on Monday. Apple’s modular desktop powerhouse is designed for professionals rather than everyday consumers, meaning it’s not intended for everyone.

mac pro device on a desk next to computer monitor — The new Mac Pro is $6,999.

Dan Ackerman/CNET

Even the MacBook Pro can get more expensive than most may realize once you configure it with high-end specifications. Like Vision Pro, a 16-inch MacBook Pro with Apple’s M2 Max processor, 32GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage will run you $3,499.

Years of research and development are also likely reflected in Vision Pro’s price. Since it’s an entirely different type of computer compared to the Mac, iPhone or iPad, Apple had to develop new technologies such as the R1 chip, which processes data from the headset’s 12 cameras, five sensors and six microphones. Mike Rockwell, vice president of Apple’s technology development group, even said during the WWDC keynote that the company filed over 5,000 patents during Vision Pro’s development. That effort certainly shows, according to CNET’s Scott Stein, who was impressed with the headset’s fidelity, video quality and interface.

«The engineering and depth of engineering in it is mind blowing,» Cook also said during the Good Morning America interview. «You’ve got more than a 4K experience in each eye. And, of course, it doesn’t come for free. It costs something to do that. «

That said, there’s a key difference that can make Vision Pro’s price more difficult to swallow compared with the MacBook Pro or Mac Pro. Both of those products are well established and have proven their usefulness to the creative professionals willing to pay for them. Vision Pro, however, is an entirely new product category that most people aren’t familiar with yet. It has yet to prove its value, and most people outside of Apple’s campus haven’t used it — except for select press that have gotten to try it in a demo controlled by Apple.

Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 is the same price as Vision Pro

microsoft-msft-hololens-2-1436-2 — Microsoft’s HoloLens 2

James Martin/CNET

Long before there was Vision Pro, there was Microsoft’s HoloLens, a head-mounted computer that also sought to change the way we work by overlaying digital graphics on top of the real world. The original HoloLens debuted in 2015 and the second version arrived in 2019 for $3,500 — the same price as Apple’s Vision Pro.

On one hand, that makes Vision Pro’s price more sensible. But there are some important differences between Apple’s new head-mounted computer and the HoloLens to consider. Take one look at Microsoft’s website for the HoloLens 2, and it’s clear the company sees this as an enterprise device more than a personal computer.

While the HoloLens may have initially been positioned as the next generation of computing, Microsoft is now primarily touting its usefulness in fields such as manufacturing, construction, health care, engineering and education. For companies and institutions, that makes purchasing a HoloLens 2 more like investing in a new piece of equipment rather than buying a new computer. Apple, however, seems to be targeting Vision Pro at everyday consumers that want a bigger canvas for working, watching movies and participating in FaceTime calls.

New tech gadgets usually get cheaper over time

apple vision pro headset on display at apple event — Apple’s Vision Pro headset

Scott Stein/CNET

First-generation technology products are typically expensive and limited compared with their successors. When the iPhone arrived in 2007, there was only one model and it started at $500, or roughly $749 in 2023 when adjusted for inflation. It included a paltry 4GB of storage, only one camera and just 15 apps. Even though Apple’s top-of-the-line iPhone 14 Pro will still cost $1,000 or more, Apple now sells several iPhones and different price ranges.

That includes the $429 iPhone SE, which has 16 times as much storage as the entry-level first iPhone, a significantly larger 4.7-inch screen compared to the original’s 3.5-inch display, a fingerprint reader and many other technologies that weren’t widely available back in 2007. And by 2023’s standards, the iPhone SE is about $320 cheaper than what Apple charged for the first iPhone.

Apple iPhone on display in 2007 — An original Apple iPhone on display during MacWorld in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007.

Eric Slomanson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A more direct comparison might be looking at the trajectory of virtual reality headsets. When the first Oculus Rift launched in 2016, it cost $599 and needed to be tethered to a powerful computer in order to work. But today’s Meta Quest 2 costs half the price at $300 and works wirelessly.

My point: Technology gets more affordable and more advanced over time. Don’t get me wrong, Vision Pro’s price will almost certainly prevent the current iteration of Apple’s headset from becoming as ubiquitous as the iPhone or Apple Watch.

However, that might not be the point — at least not right now. With Vision Pro, Apple is trying to establish what it believes will be the next major evolution of the personal computer. That’s a bigger goal than selling millions of units on launch day, and a shift like that doesn’t happen overnight, no matter what the price is. The version of Vision Pro that Apple launches next year likely isn’t the one that most people will buy.

Technologies

Elon Musk Says Starlink Could Replace Your Cellphone Carrier

Technologies

WWE 2K25 Jumps From the Top Rope Onto PlayStation Plus in September

Subscribers will also be able to play a turn-based strategy Persona game.

«The American Nightmare» Cody Rhodes, son of one of the greatest pro wrestlers of all time, «The American Dream» Dusty Rhodes, is the current undisputed WWE champion. And PlayStation Plus subscribers can bring Rhodes down a peg or help establish a new wrestling dynasty with the champion beginning on Sept. 16 in WWE 2K25.

PlayStation Plus is Sony’s version of Xbox Game Pass, and it offers subscribers a large and constantly expanding library of games. There are three PlayStation Plus tiers — Essential ($10 a month), Extra ($15 a month) and Premium ($18 a month) — and each gives subscribers access to games. However, only Extra and Premium tier subscribers can access the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog.

Here are all the games PS Plus Extra and Premium subscribers can access starting on Sept. 16. You can also check out the games all PS Plus subscribers can play in September, including Psychonauts 2.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

WWE 2K25

Take control of your favorite superstar from the men’s and women’s divisions in this knockdown, dragout wrestling game. Become one of over 300 wrestlers from today and years past, like Rhea Ripley and Andre the Giant. This entry in the series also introduces intergender wrestling matches, barricade diving and new brawl environments where you can get over or turn heel.

Persona 5 Tactica

Join the Phantom Thieves in this real-time strategy game set in the Persona universe. You and the group wander into a bizarre realm where people are living under tyrannical oppression, and you cross paths with a revolutionary named Erina. Now you’re in cahoots with the rebels as you try to free an oppressed people and find your way back home.

Other games on PS Plus

Those are a few of the games Sony is bringing to PlayStation Plus, and subscribers can play these games as well starting on Sept. 16.

*Premium subscribers only.

For more on PlayStation Plus, here’s what to know about the service and a rundown of PS Plus Extra and Premium games added in August. You can also check out the latest and upcoming games on Xbox Game Pass and Apple Arcade.

Technologies

Little Nightmares 3 Hands-On: a Creepy Co-Op Game Arriving Just in Time for Halloween

The sequel adds cooperative play with all the haunting hallmarks of the earlier games.

After about an hour playing Little Nightmares 3, I’d used a person’s bisected halves to solve a puzzle, gotten a high score in a carnival shooting game and escaped the murderous claws of a deranged baby. As a 2-foot-tall youth trying to survive the morbid dangers of one demented area after another with my co-player, I was terrified and delighted.

I’ve only sampled the first two Little Nightmares games, but in my brief preview of Little Nightmares 3, it felt like a refined version of the series’ premise: small protagonists endangered by a large, grim world filled with traps to evade, puzzles to solve and horrid, lethal enemies to outwit. Take the scale of the animated horror movie 9, mix it with the darkest of stop-motion director Henry Selick’s maudlin settings and let players enjoy the haunting ride, room by perilous room.

This time, players aren’t alone. In Little Nightmares 3, developed by Supermassive Games, two players (or one and an AI companion) choose between characters Low (a bird-masked boy with a bow) and Alone (a girl with a jumpsuit and a wrench), who rely on each other and get out of rooms using their unique tools or just good ol’ fashioned teamwork. Sometimes this means pushing a box for the other to jump on, but other obstacles require rather complex puzzle-solving.

In the game, Low and Alone seek to escape the bleak Nowhere and its roulette of dystopian lands. My preview was limited to one of these areas — Carnevale, a demented circus where our small characters had to sneak under the feet of grotesque, ambling workers (or their corpses, tied up or swinging for the sport of their fellows). When we thought we were safe, possessed puppets sprinted after us until we could team up to knock their wooden heads off and crush them. Being noticed by anyone meant our demise, requiring frantic cooperation amid the anxious stakes of rather gruesome deaths.

It’s this tension and the dour setting that sets Little Nightmares 3 apart from other co-op games like the more excitable and dynamic Split Fiction released earlier this year, a rollercoaster flipbook of game genres that made for a breathless if not terribly coherent experience. In contrast, the section of Little Nightmares 3 I played unfolded like a series of grim vignettes that rely on its pleasingly goth trappings as much as working together with your friend (or computer teammate) to progress.

Surviving your little nightmares

While I got only an hour with the game, Little Nightmares 3 seems to iterate on rather than innovate away from its predecessors: Expect more of the same in new, grotesque settings, just with the welcome addition of tightly designed teamwork dynamics. For fans of the series, this is likely a good thing. There’s not much else like Little Nightmares.

The Carnevale stage I played through opened up with rain pelting red-and-white circus tent tops, which I as the masked Low (and someone from Bandai Namco who kindly played as the jumpsuit-wearing Alone) skittered between. Lumbering above us were brutish factory workers seeking escape at the funfair, which very quickly turned sinister as we very shortly saw some hanging tied-up as others took turns beating them like a piñata. We entered one room to find one worker in connected boxes as the subject of a magician’s saw-in-half trick…which was no trick, as we had to separate the halves to climb out of a window. I tried, and failed, to ignore the viscera slopping out of the boxes.

While we hid from the human-size enemies, we had to fight the wooden puppets. Like Geppeto’s most horrid creations, they ambushed us in several rooms, requiring me to knock their heads off with Low’s bow and run away from their decapitated bodies while my teammate rushed forward to crush their heads with Alone’s wrench.

But most of the rooms are about solving puzzles, which could be as simple as moving a box for my teammate to jump up and pull a switch or figure out how a radio plays into a complex solution. While these quiet moments are a nice break from the tense combat or pursuit, they also give time to appreciate the macabre backgrounds: I ran past one room with a circle of empty tall chairs only to come back a few seconds later to find them filled with puppets, unmoving but watching.

And then there are the really, really tense moments. We moved from the carnival to the adjoining candy factory (apparently where all those brutes work) and up to the offices where the boss works, to find him asleep with the TV droning on in the darkness…and his frankly hideous baby nestled next to him. Naturally, we had to make noise, cranking open a grate, awakening the terrifying spawn who ran after us. After many, many failed escapes, my teammate and I discovered we had to scramble for a hiding place after making it past the grate.

This was perhaps the most frustrating part of the preview as we panicked looking for a solution to our deadly woes (as opposed to the slow, methodical gameplay earlier) — but that’s part of the tension, especially when adding a teammate to the mix. Ultimately, it was a hard-won lesson in patience. In the next room, a kitchen, the nightmarish baby banged a bowl on the table until the father walked over to a corpse (presumably his worker) and cut out some meat for his ghoulish child to eat.

In my short time with it, Little Nightmares 3 seems like a cooperative spooky storybook for players and their friends (but not couch buddies, sadly — it’s online co-op only) to experience. How much it lives up to previous games in the series, especially as developer Supermassive Games takes more of the reins from the franchise’s original creators Tarsier Games, is anyone’s guess. (Tarsier’s similar spiritual sequel to Little Nightmares, Reanimal, is coming in 2026.)

But as the air turns crisp and Halloween beckons, it’s the best time of the year for a creepy co-op game like Little Nightmares 3 to land.

Little Nightmares 3 comes out Oct.10, 2025, for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.