Pre-orders for the HTC Vive will open up on February 29th

HTC has announced that pre-orders for its upcoming virtual reality headset will open at the end of February, shortly before the first batch of Oculus Rift headsets start to ship out. On Monday morning, CEO Cher Wang told the Telegraph that pre-orders for the HTC Vive will open on February 29th, and will begin shipping sometime in April, but she didn’t mention the headset’s price, which is a little worrying. The Oculus Rift costs $600, which is more than most people are willing to spend on something as new as virtual reality, so offering a more affordable alternative would be a great way for competitors like HTC to get the upper hand. Unfortunately, if HTC was planning to do that, it almost certainly would’ve announced the price of the Vive by now, and the fact that it hasn’t suggests that the headset will be similarly expensive.

HTC will start taking pre-orders for Vive, its virtual reality headset, from February 29, its chief executive has confirmed. Cher Wang told the Telegraph the company had chosen to refocus on virtual reality (VR) and away from smartphones, saying the company was now “more realistic”. “Yes, smartphones are important, but to create a natural extension to other connected devices like wearables and virtual reality is more important,” she said. Vive has been developed with game maker Valve, designed to fully immerse its wearer in their virtual environment while playing games. It will go on wider commercial sale in April, and will compete with Facebook-owned Oculus Rift and Sony’s PlayStation VR as the technology finally enters the mainstream. Its price remains unknown. “I think the problem was competition – Apple, Xiaomi, these companies spend tons of money on communications and marketing, they pump a huge amount of investment into the market. There are a lot of Chinese competitors.” The news comes in the wake of Oculus announcing the price tag for its Rift headset (£499), and the alleged leaking of Sony’s PlayStation VR system on Canadian Amazon last week. HTC showcased the second generation developer kit, Vive Pre, at CES in Las Vegas, a signifcant aesthetic departure from the first version which was launched with much fanfare at last year’s Mobile World Congress.