I'd say you're getting a lot more at a much cheaper price with Occulus Rift than you did with Glass. I think the point is charge more if that's what it takes to create a good experience. Google charged a lot more and the experience was awful. I used it for 1 week and to me Glass seemed like something that was a year or two from being ready for release. The extra expense didn't get you a killer experience.
Glass in mass production was supposed to be a $200 - $299 device from industry estimates at the time. One report claimed it contained $80 in parts. That's a lot of leeway to push itself into the low end of the tech enthusiast market, if Google ever really wants to make it a consumer item.
The Oculus is an amazing and wholly novel experience, the Glass is a completely underwhelming one. I don't think Google could sell many of them, even at a much lower price point.
I wouldn't say it never shipped to consumers. It was available for purchase on the Play Store alongside their other consumer products, and billed as an 'explorer edition'. If it was only intended for devs it should have been available for purchase on the dev site and billed as a developer edition.