The Vive will ship in “early April” 2016 for a hefty $799.
Well, it looks like those of us thinking that Valve and HTC would take a look at the fan backlash surrounding the Rift’s $600 price tag and adjust the cost of their upcoming Vive headset accordingly are in for an unpleasant surprise. HTC has announced that the headset will be shipping as soon as April, 2016, but at $200 more than the Rift. It will initially only be available in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Netherland, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Taiwan, China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
The device will be powered by SteamVR, and for the $799 cost of admission, you will also get controller for each hand and a pair of “Lighthouse” laser base stations to track movement in a room-scale environment.
These details were revealed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (via UploadVR, where it was also confirmed that the Vive will ship with an internal microphone and integrated Bluetooth support to communicate with a variety of smartphones. It will also come bundled with the games Job Simulator and Fantastic Contraption.
What do you guys think of this? Obviously $800 is completely ludicrous from an everyday consumer standpoint (considering you need a $1000 PC to run the damn thing), but the Vive does seem quite a bit more feature heavy than the Rift, and feels like it would actually deliver a “complete” VR experience for the kind of tech enthusiasts who would buy into it.
Source: Upload VR
