Better hardware, sure, but only Facebook was reckless and rich enough to risk throwing so much money at it. The reason competing headsets (index, HTC etc) are so expensive are because those companies need to turn profit from selling the headset. Facebook decided to try selling headsets basically at a loss, and hope to get money from the oculus store instead. That resulted in really cheap headsets that were much more affordable to curious people to just buy and try without a $1000+ investment and a requirement for a gaming PC.

That's something basically only Google, Facebook or Amazon, and maybe Tesla/Musk, could afford to try.