I'm going to attempt to justify the price for anyone who still thinks the Rift should be under $500. This is a cut and paste from another thread but I've adapted it a bit. I think people who think $600 is "way too much" are failing to see the big picture and how the CV1 fits into it.
1) Most cutting edge tech is expensive at first. An 23" LCD monitor in 2004 cost $2000 on Black Friday. 1080p and 4K displays were both very expensive at first. A current desktop PC cost about $2000 in the mid-90s. Flagship smartphones with high specs (relative to when they were released) have generally cost $600 - 1000 off contract. DVD players cost ~$1000 when they first came out. 4K TVs still cost a fortune and aren't supported much (though they definitely will be in the future). The high end GPUs that we all have cost upwards of $500.
2) Oculus did quote it as being lower than $599, but they also changed their tone four months ago so this shouldn't have been a surprised. Should we hold Palmer to things he said six months to two years ago? I say no, because Palmer frankly has no experience with any aspect of this nor do the other founders.
It's a completely new product/type of technology with all sorts of ins and outs that could've complicated things and drove up the price. The price was also more easily to forecast with the devkits as they were built out of existing parts. With the CV1, I'm not surprised that it caught even the founders off guard when all was said and done.
In normal circumstances there wouldn't have been such an uproar because in normal circumstances people wouldn't be banging their fists on the table and demanding price estimates a year or two years in advance. VR is not normal circumstances. If Oculus is still giving the wrong estimates like this for the CV2/CV3 then I think we'll have the right to be mad, but we should let this one slide.
3) For what it is, it's worth it. Right now it is a niche device for enthusiasts with powerful PC gaming hardware. 2016 isn't the "year of VR" like many clickbait articles claim, it's just the first year that consumer VR was available to purchase. Like TotalBiscuit said, we don't think of 2013 or whenever 4K displays emerged as being the "year of 4K" because 4K displays are still prohibitively expensive for a lot of people.
4) Oculus is funding a ton of content because they know about the chicken and egg problem of increasing the adoption rate before there is content and vice versa. That's why the acquisition was absolutely crucial for them as it is enabling them to play the long game which is what is needed for VR's gradual adoption. Normally, a new platform without many users would have dire amounts of content however Oculus is going a long way to ensure this isn't the case so if you do pony up the cost of the CV1, it's pretty much guaranteed that you won't run out of stuff to do on it.
Anyway, I think everyone who has tried CV1 would say that it's worth it at $600. It's expensive, yes, but it's also an amazing piece of hardware relative to the state of the art and it's something that the vast majority of people will spend hundreds (thousands?) of hours with between now and when the CV2 comes out. Is your $1500 gaming PC worth it? How about your $400-ish PS4? Or your smartphone?
People need to take a step back and try seeing the forest through the trees here. In retrospect this was bound to happen and I wouldn't be surprised if the HTC Vive was in the $1000 range considering it's all inclusive and I don't think they're subsidizing it in the same way. That's why they call it the bleeding edge, emphasis on bleeding. It sucks if you're a young person now who is interested in VR but lacks disposable income, but that doesn't mean that Oculus should start vomiting money to lower the price by $100 or so. Just look at the CV1 compared to the DK2 and compare the specs, I don't see how you could possible make an argument that the CV1 should cost roughly the same amount.
$599 seems about right to me.
Lastly (offtopic), it boggles my mind that Palmer goes out of his way to reason with people on forums like this. Just look at the front page right now. People are acting like entitled children with the attention spans of ferrets.
I defended Oculus last night and woke up to a series of PMs this morning from the same person calling me both a "faggot" and a "rich k---" (antisemitic slur). Jesus fucking Christ, it's a wonder why anyone important even bothers to start a dialogue with gaming communities at all. It pains me to think that reddit is a actually one of the more level headed communities too (overall).