HTC Vive priced at $800
Pre-orders go live next week.
The HTC Vive Virtual Reality kit's consumer edition has been priced at $800.
That's roughly £565, but no UK pricing has been announced and these things rarely come down to a straight currency conversion. We'll update when the price in pounds is confirmed.
$800 may sound like a lot - and indeed it's more than the Oculus Rift's £499 / $599 price tag - but it also comes with a lot more peripherals. In addition to the VR headset, the HTC Vive also includes two wireless motion controllers, and a couple of 360 degree tracking and room scale movement sensors to determine the size of your playing field so you don't keep bumping into things.
The consumer edition of the HTC Vive also includes phone functionality, so you can receive text messages, take calls, look at pictures, etc. It will also have SteamVR integration to stay current with the gaming platforms' latest features.
Two games slated to launch as pack-in titles with Vive include Owlchemy Labs' (Snuggle Truck, Dyscourse) Job Simulator, and Radial Games' (Monster Loves You!, RocketsRocketsRockets) collaboration with Northway Games (Incredipede) Fantastic Contraption. The former is a tongue-in-cheek look at an automated future where all work has been assigned to robots, while Fantastic Contraption tasks players with building odd machinery.
Pre-orders for the HTC Vive will go live worldwide on 29th February at 3pm UK time with orders expected to be fulfilled in early April.
For more on HTC Vive, Digital Foundry went hands-on with the near final model last month and came away suitably impressed. "Beyond the basics, its key strength is how seamless and complete the experience feels - at no point through any of the 12 demos did we lose positional tracking from the headset, nor were the controls anything other than totally rock-solid," our Richard Leadbetter wrote in his Vive impressions. "The experience still needs to be tested outside of controlled conditions, of course, but all the indications so far strongly suggest that SteamVR and HTC Vive are ready for showtime."
