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HTC delays Vive release until April

The HTC Vive virtual reality headset. (Image courtesy HTC.) [1]
The HTC Vive virtual reality headset. (Image courtesy HTC.)

The consumer release of HTC’s Vive headset is delayed until April 2016, HTC announced last week [2].

“We will be starting the new year by making an additional 7,000 units available to developers, with pre-orders from the end of February followed by commercial availability in April 2016,” the company said.

In September [3], HTC said it would have at least some Vive headsets available before the end of this year, with the bulk shipping in the first quarter of 2016.

I got a demo of the Vive headset in September and it blew me away [4]. The demo was the closest I’ve come so far to stepping into a Star Trek-style Holodeck, with graphics good enough to actually feel realistic.

The HTC Vive is a tethered headset, meaning that it requires a connection to a high-end computer. It is expected to cost up to $700 when it is released.

This headset is released in cooperation with Valve and works on the Steam VR ecosystem.

The other major virtual reality ecosystems are the Oculus Rift-Samsung Gear VR platform, Google Cardboard, Sony Playstation VR, and Razer-backed OSVR [5].