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HTC Vive Pre-orders Start On 29 February, Watch Out Oculus

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HTC Vive Pre-orders Start On 29 February, Watch Out Oculus

HTC Vive pre-orders start on 29 February, watch out Oculus, you’re in a for the fight of your life. Given that virtual reality enthusiasts all over the world were utterly shocked last week upon the news that Palmer Luckey doesn’t know what in the same ballpark means, the HTC Vive might just have the upper hand.

Cher Wang, HTC CEO, has spoken to the Telegraph and said that the company has chosen to shift its focus on virtual reality, and drive away from the smartphone industry, because now, HTC, is more realistic.

HTC has partnered with game maker supreme Valve to design an immersive virtual reality headset. It will sell world-wide starting with April of this year, competing directly with the much-awaited Oculus Rift. Sony’s PlayStation VR is out of the question at the current moment as there is no information available on pricing or release date. What we do know is that Sony has stated, over and over again, that the company will release their virtual reality headset only when they have enough content available – the Japanese company is known for working on more than 100 titles for their VR headset.

For the HTC Vive, Valve will be in charge of the gaming platform with their beloved Steam – as well as offering a place for Oculus Rift lovers.

Even though we have an official pre-order date, we still don’t know what the price of a Vive headset will retail at. Yet, we will have details in the upcoming weeks regarding the cost of a Vive, notes Cher Wang.

But why the sudden shift from the smartphone industry?

Well, because the huge competition from Xiaomi and Apple, with both companies pumping a ton of money on marketing and communications. There are also a lot of other Chinese competitors that offer low-quality devices with staggering specifications, notes the CEO of HTC.

During CES 2016, HTC displayed and demoed their 2nd-gen dev kit, the Vive Pre. Those who were present, were the first to witness the huge difference between the two dev kits.

However, regardless of the change in design, the price needs to meet the expectations of VR enthusiasts across the world so the adoption rate soars, and brands jump on the bandwagon.

You need a powerful PC to run a VR headset. A PC that will make you cough up something between $500 and $1000. Dell’s Alienware has already started offering bundles that shave $200 off the base price of an Oculus Rift, and, Cher Wang says, that HP and Asus will be releasing VR-ready PCs in the upcoming months.

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Valve is giving the VR headset for free

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Developers Edition

It isn’t shocking news that Valve will be giving away, for free, their VR headset, named HTC Vive Developer Edition – they are known for their marketing strategies of giving away free gear for developers to play around with. Valve Steam Machine suffered from the same marketing ploy, and it raised its popularity tenfold.

At this time, it’s unknown when, and where you can apply for a HTC Vive – rumours have it that you’ll be able to apply on HTC’s VR website next week.

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait long enough for the VR gear to be available to the general public. ” Built to deliver high-end VR, the HTC Vive Developer Edition is the first look at SteamVR.” Valve states on the Steam website. “The dev kit comes with a headset, two controllers and two base stations-everything you need to dive in and start creating new interactive VR experiences. It will be available this spring, followed by consumer edition hardware later in 2015.”

HTC’s, and Valve’s marketing strategies are somewhat different, and at the same time they can be seen as aggressive if you care to compare them to Facebook-owned Oculus Rift, or Project Morpheus, currently developed by Sony.

Oculus Rift has already been sent to backers of the Kickstarter campaign, and the developer edition is sold for 350$ – although the creators highly recommend non-developers to wait a while and not meddle with on-going demos, and concept games, because it will have a bad impact on their future experience with their virtual reality machine.

On the other hand, Sony has shipped the Project Morpheus to only a few, and select developers. Maintaining a hush-hush strategy for their virtual reality gear. And even more so, Sony has borrowed the headsets to the developers – free doesn’t make big corp investors think of profits, does it?

According to HTC, those who will be chosen will be sent a headset along with two controllers and a base station – it’s everything a developer needs to create a virtual reality world for the end-user to experience.

HTC VR’s homepage states that their collaboration with Valve is for the long-run and that we should be expecting more news regarding games, and apps from both of the companies – ” The Vive headset was developed in conjunction with Valve, creators of such ground-breaking games as Portal and Half-Life. HTC manufactures some of the finest consumer electronics on the planet and Valve is an unrivaled architect of virtual worlds, so you know the collaboration is something special. Vive is powered by Valve’s SteamVR so plenty of games that take advantage of its capabilities will soon be available on the Steam service.”.

The thing that differentiates Vive from other virtual reality gear is that the user will be rooted in real space. The headset maps out the room, and then selects various scenarios for you to play in – it alerts you when you get too close to a real-life object. It limits its ability to create a space exploration game, for example, but at the same time, you can be fully immersed in your own room, walking down the hallway seeking glorious treasure at the end of the, what is now, an underwater cave.

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