Vive isn't gonna be any cheaper though, that's just an impossibility. On the other hand, Vive has a lot more stuff in it, so while it may be more expensive, it could be better value. The room scaling lighthouse whatever, which from my understanding will only come later to Occulus with the Occulus Touch that you'll have to buy on top of the Rift, and Vive comes with a controller too while Rift is just bundled with a generic xbox controller(that might be the Occulus Touch too, frankly I have no real idea, just seen the argument between the 2).
But yeah shit's expensive, as expected. They say it's industry standard to not announce the price when you announce the preorder, but if it was 400 they probably would have announced it right away. They didn't cause they knew it was expensive, so there was no point in announcing it beforehand. It's still selling anyway so whatever.
That said, it's PC luxury, which is an fairly good market. There's plenty of people buying SLI video cards and the Titan and gigantic screens/multiple screens and 150hz screens and shiny keyboards and whatever else, so yeah I don't think it'll be an issue for sales if it has a high price point. 2nd gen will probably be just as expensive too, but they might have a "lite" version that's based on the first gen with some improvements for a more accessible price at that point. That's how I assume they'll go forward, instead of trying to reduce costs. That's how video cards industry has been working for a while.
I expect the PSVR to be 400-450, since Sony might be able to make the money back on software and console sales and shit like that, so they don't have to sell at component prices if they don't want to. Also cause their shit is less powerful than the others I think?