On June 5, after months of rumours and leaks, Apple officially unveiled its new virtual reality / augmented reality headset. It’s called the Vision Pro and it features some really nifty features powered by advanced tech. It’s out “early next year” and will cost over $US3,000. Oof! I wonder what you could buy for that much money…
Announced during Apple’s annual WWDC event, the Vision Pro includes 12 cameras, a high-tech passthrough feature letting people see your eyes on a front-facing OLED display, advanced 3D camera technology, dual 4K+ screens, support for Apple Arcade and Unity apps, an external battery pack to cut down on weight, and a lot more. But none of this comes cheap! While early reporting suggested the price would be around $US2,500-$US3,000, Apple proved them wrong by announcing an astoundingly steep price point of $US3,500. That’s a lot of money, so let’s see just how far that $US3,500 could get you!
For this thought experiment, taxes don’t exist because trying to calculate all of that would be a nightmare involving multiple variables and it’s just not worth the hassle. So instead, let’s pretend taxes aren’t a thing and all prices are rounded up to a whole number instead of ending in 99 cents. Cool? Let’s begin!
Seven PlayStation 5 consoles
It’s easier now to find a PS5, either online or in brick-and-mortar stores. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to find seven of them hanging around your local Best Buy, but if you did, you could snag them all for the price of Apple’s new “facial computer.”
Eight Steam Decks
Why would one person need eight Steam Decks? Well, let me pitch an idea. The Deck is great, but its battery life is kind of bad. So why not fully charge all eight of them and then install Vampire Survivors on each? Then, play until one starts to die and just hop over to the next — the Steam cloud will transfer your save — while the dying ones charge. You’d never have to wait to play Vampire Survivors again! And it’d only cost you $US3,500 ($4,859).
11 Xbox Series S consoles
Microsoft’s tiny little next-gen Xbox can fit practically anywhere, so you could use these convenient gaming consoles in any room or media centre with ease. Or you could instead hide them around your yard like Easter eggs for the most amazing (and expensive) Easter egg hunt in history.
10 Switch OLEDs
Apply the Stem Deck rotation plan, but replace Vampire Survivors with Tears of the Kingdom. And hey, at least one of the Switches shouldn’t start to drift right away, right? Right?
50 copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Open one, play it, and enjoy what is likely to be one of the biggest, best games of 2023. And then use the other 49 to try and recreate some of the fun things people are building in the game. Get some duct tape, some glue, and maybe some string. Really go for it. Have fun. And try hard to not build a penis.
70 copies of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
Seven Meta Quest 3 VR headsets (when released later this year…)
Meta’s VR headsets are much cheaper than Apple’s Vision Pro. The upcoming Quest 3 will start at $US499 for the 128GB model, so go and pre-order seven of them and get a few friends together to play Star Trek Bridge Crew for a few hours.
580,500 Fortnite V-Bucks
You could buy all the skins and dances you want. It won’t help you win against deadly, over-caffeinated tweens and their amazing sniper skills. But it will help you remind them that you have disposable income and that’s the real “Victory Royale” in life.
Three Valve Index VR headsets (and a couple of games, too)
You likely won’t be able to play Half-Life: Alyx, one of the best virtual reality games ever made, on Apple’s new device. But you can play it on the Index. And then you can buy two more and donate them to some Half-Life fans desperate to play the latest, VR-only instalment. That would be very nice of you, so I assume you’ll get a lot of afterlife points for that move. (I don’t understand religion.)
This Car
Fuck video games. Or virtual reality. You could just buy this car or some other car that costs less than $US3,500. Go cheap enough and you can probably even swing insurance for whatever rusty death trap you decide to purchase from some dude who assures you the brakes work.
The ultimate tech and gaming bundle
We’ve all had a good laugh here, buying cheap cars and stacks of bad video games like Gollum. But if you really want to go on a shopping spree, you could. At current prices, without taxes, you could purchase all of the following for $US3,500 USD.
PS5 Digital, Xbox Series X, Switch OLED, Steam Deck, one year of Game Pass Ultimate, 11-inch iPad Pro, iPhone 14, and a single $US70 video game. Sure, you wouldn’t be able to watch Ted Lasso in space, but you would increase your power bill by a lot. Oh, and hopefully you’d be happy. That’s the point of all this, right, to be happy? I’m going to stop thinking about money now.
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