It has gotten cheaper to explore virtual reality on the Oculus Rift headset.
The device, made by a company owned by Facebook, now sells for $499. That's a 17 percent markdown from its previous price of $599. The Rift's touch controllers are also being reduced by $100 to $99.
Those costs don't include a high-powered computer that needs to be connected to the Rift.
The discounts mark the latest effort to lure more people into trying out virtual reality, the artificial worlds that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes will eventually reshape technology and culture. Facebook bought Oculus for about $2 billion as part of Zuckerberg's effort to realize his vision.
The Rift remains more expensive than Sony's Playstation VR headset that sells for $399. HTC's Vive headset costs $799.
That's the pressing question keeping creators and small business owners in anxious limbo as they await a decision that could upend their livelihoods. The fate of the popular app will be decided by the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on Jan. 10 over a law requiring TikTok to break ties with its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a U.S. ban.
At the heart of the case is whether the law violates the First Amendment with TikTok and its creator allies arguing that it does. The U.S. government, which sees the platform as a national security risk, says it does not.
For creators, the TikTok doomsday scenarios are nothing new since President-elect Donald Trump first tried to ban the platform through executive order during his first term. But despite Trump's recent statements indicating he now wants TikTok to stick around, the prospect of a ban has never been as immediate as it is now with the Supreme Court serving as the final arbiter.
If the government prevails as it did in a lower court, TikTok says it would shut down its U.S. platform by Jan. 19, leaving creators scrambling to redefine their futures.
"A lot of my other creative friends, we're all like freaking out. But I'm staying calm," said Gillian Johnson, who benefited financially from TikTok's live feature and rewards program, which helped creators generate higher revenue potential by posting high-quality original content. The 22-year-old filmmaker and recent college graduate uses her TikTok earnings to help fund her equipment for projects such as camera lens and editing software for her short films "Gambit" and "Awaken! My Neighbor."
Johnson said the idea of TikTok going away is "hard to accept."