From the beginning, Vive has been at the forefront of virtual reality, with HTC pioneering several ground breaking technologies, comments Cher Wang, chairwoman and CEO, HTC. Since announcing Vive this time last year, we have worked tirelessly with Valve to deliver the best VR experience on the market, winning multiple awards and receiving critical acclaim from media, consumers and the industry. With the Vive consumer edition we are now able to realize our ultimate vision; bringing Vive into homes around the globe so that people can experience immersive virtual reality in a away that fires the imagination and truly changes the world.
HTC Vive Consumer Edition Pre-Orders Start Next Week At $799
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HTC and Valve are finally ramping up to a consumer version release of their Head Mounted Display product known as the Vive. Reception of the new product’s pricetag was mostly agreeable, compared to the uproar for the preorder price of the competing product, Oculus’s Rift. This could be due to the fact that developers of the Vive have previously mentioned that they might expect that the Vive would cost more than the Oculus upon release. This price also can be slightly more justified since you are also getting the 2 motion hand controllers specifically designed for VR use along with your Vive HMD. Conversely, the Oculus comes in at $200 cheaper but doesn’t include the Oculus Touch controllers.
These two VR headsets are also geared for relatively different modes of play. The Oculus is designed for staying statically in one position like a chair for example. The HTC Vive is designed to take the experience one (or more) steps further by allowing your VR experience follow you as you walk around in both the physical and virtual world. The Vive headset uses two “Lighthouse” sensors placed on either side of your “play space” to track your movements and actions. The “Chaperon system” inside the Vive headset uses an integrated front mounted camera to detect objects or wall you might bump into while your in the “VR world”.
This new “consumer version” of the Vive has been updated with a new headstrap, refreshed branding and now phone functionality so you can send and receive phone calls, check text messages and send replies, and even check your calendar invites all from the headset itself. The Preorder also is planned to be released with two Virtual Reality ready games like Job Simulator (Owlchemy Labs) and Fantastic Contraption (Northway Games). Check out the new trailer for the device below.
If you’d like to pre-oder the HTC Vive you can do so at 10 a.m. Eastern time on Monday 2/29 at which time pre-orders will open worldwide with pre-order fulfillment and full commercial availability starting early April 2016. A countdown timer is now available on the HTC Vive website and you can also sign up for Vive updates there.