Two weeks ago saw HTC finally announce the price of the HTC Vive virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) at $799 USD. That’s undoubtedly a massive amount of money, but with the extras included in the box that enable Room Scale VR, many fans have agreed that it’s good value after Oculus VR set the bar at $599 for the Oculus Rift. Still, there are some that understandably think the price is far too high. To those people, HTC itself has recently offered a defence of its price by comparing it to other game-changing electronics from the past few decades.
The company’s Senior Global Online Communications Manager, Jeff Gordon, took to Twitter to defend the price. He said: “World-changing innovations priced at launch:
Macintosh, 1984: $2,495
Smartphone, 1994: $1,099
Plasma TV, 1997: $15,000
@htcvive, 2016: $799″
Of course, Gordon’s numbers don’t include the price of a high-powered PC needed to run the HTC Vive. So far the cheapest VR ready rigs come as part of Oculus VR’s Oculus Ready PC Programme at $1,499 and are bundled with the Oculus Rift itself. HTC has its own ‘VR Certified’ PCs, with the PCs listed so far starting at $1,699. When asked how many people would already own one of these machines, Gordon replied: “I don’t have the exact percent, but it’s a surprisingly large number.”
The HTC Vive will be going up for pre-order later today at 10:00am EST, with first shipments then taking place on 1st April. Along with the HMD itself, the kit includes two position tracked controllers, two Lighthouse base stations and two free videogames in Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulator and Northway Games’ Fantastic Contraption.
Stay tuned to VRFocus for the latest on the HTC Vive.
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The post HTC Defends Vive Price Comparing it to Macs & Smartphones appeared first on VRFocus.
