The HTC Vive will be finally available for pre-order on February 29, as announced by Chief Executive Officer Cher Wang to the Telegraph.
According to Wang, HTC has chosen to focus more on virtual reality than smartphones.
Yes, smartphones are important, but to create a natural extension to other connected devices like wearables and virtual reality is more important.
As we all know, the HTC Vive has been co-produced by Valve as part of the SteamVR project. The headset was recently redesigned in order to be more comfortable; a front-facing camera was also added, which will enable the wearer to see the real world around him/her.
This isn't available in either Oculus Rift or PlayStation VR and might very well be a significant difference, especially in those cases where the wearer is feeling uncomfortable in the virtual world and needs to go back to the real one for a bit. With the HTC Vive, this will be possible without removing the headset.
There's still no indication on the price but we can expect to learn about it when the pre-order page goes live, just like with the Oculus Rift. As for the wider commercial release, Wang mentioned April.
So far, only Elite: Dangerous announced official SteamVR support, though Epic's Unreal Engine 4 has fully integrated SteamVR support. With the plethora of UE4 games on the way, the games lineup should expand rather quickly.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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