Last year at Mobile World Congress, HTC announced their partnership with Valve for the Vive VR headset. It was one of the more popular VR headsets from 2015, although it’s taken quite a while to come to market. Pre-orders are set to start on February 29th (tomorrow) in many countries, and will be available in April. Unlike the Samsung Gear VR, LG’s 360 VR or Google Cardboard, the HTC Vive is much more of a traditional VR headset – hence the huge price difference. The Vive headset is set to compete with the Oculus Rift, which is already up for pre-order, and the Vive doesn’t run off of your phone, like the other cheaper headsets mentioned. The Vive has all sorts of great games and such for users to use. In fact, HTC has struck a deal with Audi in Europe which will use the Vive headsets in some of their showrooms to simulate driving their new models like the A6.
While we’ve known the pricing of the HTC Vive here in the US, which is around $799. More expensive than the Oculus Rift, but definitely worth it. Now, the Vive team have announced pricing for Europe. We’re looking at a price of about €899, that translates to about $991 USD. That’s at today’s currency exchange rate, additionally Europe rates include tax (unlike the US). Over in China we’re looking at ¥6888, which translates to just over a grand here in US Dollars. New Zealand sits at $749 USD and Canada sits at $949 CAD. Definitely not a cheap VR headset from HTC, but something that’s really worth it.
HTC has already traveled the US doing demos for those that aren’t lucky enough to attend CES, Mobile World Congress or IFA. If you haven’t done a demo, it’s definitely worth doing. The HTC Vive has seen a few changes since the initial model shown off last week. There is now a camera on the outside of the headset and this is to show you if anything or anyone is in front of you (last thing you want to do is trip over a couch or table). Pre-orders go up tomorrow, and orders are slated to arrive around April 5th.