HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday set the price for its first virtual reality (VR) headset — the HTC Vive — at US$799.
The recommended retail price was announced by HTC and US video game supplier Valve, which jointly developed the HTC Vive, ahead of the four-day Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, which opened yesterday.
The price is much lower than the US$1,500 foreign brokerages had estimated.
Pre-order sales are to begin on Monday next week, while official sales are to begin in early April.
“From the beginning, Vive has been at the forefront of virtual reality, with HTC pioneering several groundbreaking technologies,” HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅)) said.
“With the Vive consumer edition we are now able to realize our ultimate vision: bringing Vive into homes around the globe so that people can experience immersive virtual reality in a way that fires the imagination and truly changes the world,” she said.
The HTC Vive features a head-mounted display (HMD) and tracked controllers, allowing wearers to inspect objects from every angle and interact with their surroundings in virtual reality.
It includes a headset, a front-facing camera that blends physical elements into the virtual world, two wireless controllers with haptic, or touch, feedback and dual stage triggers and room scale movement sensors.
A “Vive Phone Services” feature also allows users to receive and make telephone calls, receive and send text messages, and check calendar invites through the headset.
The consumer edition will also come with two VR applications: Owlchemy Labs’ real-life simulation game Job Simulator and building game Fantastic Contraption by Northway Games in collaboration with Radial Games.
The HTC Vive is to be released initially in 24 countries, including Taiwan.
The HTC Vive is one of the Taiwanese smartphone maker’s key initiatives to diversify its business and create new revenue streams.
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