While Oculus and Sony continue to dance around the release dates of the Rift and PlayStation VR, Valve and HTC have broken ahead of their chief competitors after slating the consumer launch of the HTC Vive for April 2016.
Once slated to debut in December of this year, an official blog post reveals that the companies realigned the device’s release window to 2016 in order to “focus on delivering the very best experience possible for a consumer release.” Before getting the HTC Vive into the hands of consumers, however, the turn of the year will herald an extra 7,000 units being shipped to developers across the industry.
“We will be starting the new year by making an additional 7,000 units available to developers, followed by commercial availability in April 2016,” the company said in a statement published on Facebook (and also the HTC blog, which immediately collapsed under traffic). We are incredibly excited about the future and look forward to sharing more information as we move forward towards launch.”
As exciting as it is to finally learn of an official release window for the VR device, both parties remained mum on an official price point, which is now surely the decider that could make or break the HTC Vive’s ability to make a solid first impression.
“In collaboration with Valve, we have been distributing the HTC Vive Developer Kits to developers and content creators, and are continuing to work with many other innovative companies to create content that spans gaming, entertainment, medical, education and retail,” the company said.
As things stand, the Facebook-owned Oculus Rift is primed to arrive in Q1 2016, while Sony looks likely to hold fire with the PlayStation VR until closer to mid-2016. HTC Vive, meanwhile, is now locked for next April, but will you be picking up HTC and Valve’s head-mounted device?
