Tomorrow, April 5 marks the first anniversary of the HTC Vive’s commercial release, and yesterday the Taiwanese company made a couple of interesting announcements in order to commemorate the event. Starting tomorrow, existing HTC Vive owners will be able to acquire Arcade Saga for free, and new customers who purchase the HTC Vive headset will be eligible for a €100/$100 discount. Additionally, the Viveport Subscription payment model will go live on the same day, giving HTC Vive owners a new way to discover VR software.
Arcade Saga was developed by HTC’s internal studio 2Bears Studio, and the game usually retails $19.99. Arcade Saga is a fast-paced action game featuring three different game modes including Smash, Bowshot, and Fracture, taking inspiration from conventional games like pinball, table tennis, and archery. As for prospective customers looking to buy the HTC Vive headset, the aforementioned discount applies only to purchases on the company’s official website, as well as a handful of select retail partners including Dixons, Game, Scan, and Overclockers. The new Viveport Subscription service will give HTC Vive owners the option to pay a monthly fee of $6.99 in order to gain access to five titles of their choosing. Subscribers get unlimited access to the chosen software until they choose to add other apps to the rotation, and they can shuffle things around every month. In theory, this should give HTC Vive owners a new way to explore the ever-growing library of VR content and try applications for free before they decide whether they’re worth a full purchase. The Viveport Subscription service will launch on April 5 with over 50 titles available, including TheBlue, Fantastic Contraption, Everest VR, Mars Odyssey and more. New users will get to use the service free of charge for a month, HTC revealed.
The HTC Vive is the first virtual reality headset to utilize Valve’s room scale technology. Unlike its biggest rival – the Oculus Rift – the HTC Vive was released with motion controllers at launch, giving users an advanced sense of immersion and involvement in virtual reality environments. The device is also one of the most successful VR headsets on the market, with HTC previously confirming that over 140,000 units have been shipped by late 2016.