HTC Confirms Vive Pre-Orders Start February 29

News
By Kevin Carbotte
published

News broke yesterday that HTC would be opening up pre-orders on February 29 for its anticipated Vive VR HMD. Tom’s Hardware had been told HTC wasn’t talking about the retail kit during our briefing at CES, so this news contrasted with what we knew. Rather than repeat what The Telegraph was saying, we went right to the source for confirmation.

JB McRee, Sr. Manager of Product Marketing of Virtual Reality at HTC confirmed to us that the Vive headset will in fact be available for pre-order on February 29, 2016. HTC doesn’t have any other details to share about the retail release, but McRee told said the details will be announced prior to the pre-order date.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dark_lord69
    ugh... Since Oculus is $599 I'm guessing this one won't be any cheaper. Eager to see the final price and what comes with...
    For now I'm just gonna focus on upgrading my PC.
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    I feel like this might land around the $400 mark, just to undercut the Rift. But this is still going to be a niche market for a while now, and it's still the first generation of these releases, so you'll still have to pay the Early Adopter fees if you want it now.
    Reply
  • jasonelmore
    hope the price comes out before the actual pre-order day.. Like at least 2-3 days before so i know if i need to bother staying up all night.
    Reply
  • Gurbo
    I feel like this might land around the $400 mark, just to undercut the Rift. But this is still going to be a niche market for a while now, and it's still the first generation of these releases, so you'll still have to pay the Early Adopter fees if you want it now.
    The last thing I had heard is that they said it would be more expensive than the Rift... We'll see, but if they place it at a lower price, I don't expect it to be much lower.
    Reply
  • killerchickens
    I feel like this might land around the $400 mark, just to undercut the Rift. But this is still going to be a niche market for a while now, and it's still the first generation of these releases, so you'll still have to pay the Early Adopter fees if you want it now.
    Rift is being sold at cost, no way vive will be cheaper.
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    17309164 said:
    ugh... Since Oculus is $599 I'm guessing this one won't be any cheaper. Eager to see the final price and what comes with...
    For now I'm just gonna focus on upgrading my PC.

    My educated guess would say that HTC will come in significantly higher.
    I don't know one way or another, but there are several key factors that lead me to believe this.

    A) HTC has always said it wants to make the most premium VR experience. It has never made claims of making a more affordable solution.
    B) HTC Vive includes the headset, the lighthouse trackers for room scale VR and the two wand controllers to track your hands.
    The headset is on par with Oculus Rift, from what I can tell, and it uses the same size and dimension screens. The controllers will add significant cost and the lighthouse trackers aren't going to be a free to produce either. All of these things will add to the cost of the package.
    C) HTC doesn't have a company like Facebook behind it that can afford to take a loss of the start. The company has been losing market share for years and its stock value plummetted in the last year. The Vive will have to be sold at a profit in order for HTC to survive. Oculus has said it is selling the Rift at cost. I may be wrong about that, Valve does have deep pockets, but I don't forsee Valve subsidizing hardware costs at this stage.

    It's not my place to speculate on a price, but I don't see it being a cheaper package than what Oculus has released.
    Reply
  • alidan
    I feel like this might land around the $400 mark, just to undercut the Rift. But this is still going to be a niche market for a while now, and it's still the first generation of these releases, so you'll still have to pay the Early Adopter fees if you want it now.
    Rift is being sold at cost, no way vive will be cheaper.

    ill believe that when i see a tear down.

    I feel like this might land around the $400 mark, just to undercut the Rift. But this is still going to be a niche market for a while now, and it's still the first generation of these releases, so you'll still have to pay the Early Adopter fees if you want it now.
    The last thing I had heard is that they said it would be more expensive than the Rift... We'll see, but if they place it at a lower price, I don't expect it to be much lower.

    it was said it would be more expensive before rift released at 600$
    Reply
  • falchard
    I think if you are a purchaser of large monitors, a price over $500 wouldn't be a stretch.
    Reply
  • problematiq
    I'm buying it just because i don't like Oculus.
    Now to convince the wife...
    Reply
  • Tom GR
    From what i can see they waited till the preorders of ocul.
    so im guessing this will be just enough to undercut.

    $549? 579? 589?

    Also, the video card required to power this starts at like 500 doesnt it?
    and a pc that wouldnt bottleneck that would cost 1500?

    The entry to VR for any platform is going to be costly.

    I read a news release from nVidia saying something like only 30% of
    computers in existence can actually push the oculus.
    how many of those are actual gaming machines use for gaming. 50%?
    Reply