Last week, CES 2016 took over Las Vegas and made headlines the world over for the new announcements that were coming out of the woodwork., The biggest draws of the week seemed to be wearable technology, such as the new Fitbit Blaze, and Virtual Reality. HTC and Valve were in attendance, showing off their new pre-release version of the Vive, dubbed the Vive Pre. We got to spend a little time with it, and we were impressed with how the product is coming along. Last week was significant for Virtual Reality as the Oculus Rift finally went up for pre-order at a whopping $599, but if this latest rumor is to be believed the Vive could be as much as $1,500.
Considering that Sony’s Project Morpheus, the VR headset in development for the PS4, doesn’t have a price tag yet either, it seems as if there’s a race on to either undercut the Rift’s pricing or simply offer better value. This latest report comes from Focus Taiwan, which suggests that the Vive could cost as much as $1,500 due to all the other special features baked in to the headset. This would include SteamVR as well as the Vive’s ability to blend the real with the virtual through its front-facing camera. We’ve already covered that the Vive will be available to pre-order towards the end of next month, but there’s been little word on just how much the new headset is to cost.
There’s little concrete evidence to suggest such a price tag here, so this is definitely something to take with a grain of salt. Considering how badly HTC seems to betting on VR, we can’t imagine them wanting to price themselves out of the market, especially as price has quickly become a big topic of discussion since last week. There’s not only the initial outlay on the headsets themselves, but also any upgrades that you might need to make to your system in order to enjoy the new technology. We suppose that, for now, Samsung’s Gear VR – itself produced in partnership with Oculus – might well be the closes thing many of us get to a ‘good’ VR experience.