HTC Vive was expected to be detailed at MWC 2016, and that has happened with the company finally announcing the pricing and availability details of the VR headset which is seen as one of the strongest competitors to the Facebook owned Oculus Rift. HTC Vive has been priced at $799, which is a $200 premium over the Oculus Rift.
The HTC Vive ships with two controllers, one for each hand, and two camera base stations to track the user’s movement in the room. The package will be bundled with two games – Fantastic Contraption and Job Simulator. Pre-orders will begin this month end, i.e Feb 29th and shipments are expected to start early April. The pre-orders for Oculus Rift went live last month and that is expected to start shipping on March 28th, so HTC is running close with the Vive despite being announced just last year.
It looks like the setup will be a bit more complicated for the HTC Vive, as it requires you to hang the couple of cameras to track your position and the hub that collects all the data and sends it to your PC. That should explain the extra cost as compared to Oculus Rift. Thankfully, the headset has a microphone and integrates with the smartphone via the Bluetooth, so that you can take calls even while gaming on Vive.
HTC Vive – PC Requirements
So what about the minimum PC requirements to run HTC Vive? You would need a PC running either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or an AMD Radeon R9 290 graphics card. So it’s almost as high (and bad) as the requirements to run the Oculus Rift. There will be bundles with PC and graphics card partners, which should save buyers some money when getting a new computer along with the Vive, but HTC and Valve aren’t announcing those just yet.
Pre-orders will be available in 24 countries – United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Taiwan, China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
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