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One of the big questions about this year's virtual reality landscape was answered yesterday, when the HTC Vive finally went on sale. Initially playing a distant second fiddle to Oculus' Rift headset, it pulled back a lot of ground thanks to launching with motion controllers and a more room-scale focused tracking system. So much so in-fact, that more than 15,000 units were sold in the first 10 minutes.
KitGuru was right there when the pre-orders went live, and we got our unit reserved and locked in, but we were far from the only ones. Despite a near-seamless ordering procedure for most – in comparison, Rift ordering took us over an hour – many, many Vives were sold throughout yesterday.
Woah, more than 15k units in less than 10min 😮
— Shen Ye (@shen) February 29, 2016
Although we don't have confirmation on the final sale numbers, HTC VR developer Shen Ye, confirmed on Twitter that 15,000 units had been shifted in just the first 10 minutes. While we'd speculate that the final total sold was less than the Oculus Rift CV1 pre-orders, simply due to name recognition and buzz, this is a major achievement for HTC, Valve and SteamVR.
To celebrate the launch yesterday, one Vive Pre owner took to 3D painting application, TiltBrush (set to be included for free in the Vive launch bundle) to paint Valve CEO Gabe Newell. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q62itwdVD6o']
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KitGuru Says: Although £745 is hardly cheap, did many of you put down an order for a Vive? If not, what would you like to see KitGuru do to test it out when the headset arrives?
Due to the price i will more than likely be buying Second or third Gen Vive. 😛
It will hopefully have HDR screens and less screen door effect. 😀
Facebook can go do one if they think i will be buying an occulus.
Same here, I was hoping Vive would be a bit closer to OR price, and I much prefer the look of the Vive, but with that price tag, I’m now playing the ‘wait and see’ game and I’m okay with that. 🙂
I was thinking to pre order Oculus but didnt’t, then Vive, but when I saw that more companies are doing VR headsets, I prefer to wait and see the benchmarks, the reviews and what is on the waiting list.
Same here. I like gaming, but I’m not willing to spend so much money on a first generation (from a consumer perspective) technology. I’ll be back when everyone works nearly perfectly and game developers have had time to figure out what works best in VR.
Plus, I enjoy strategy and simulation, and VR is a waste for those games