Back in August, Valve made it clear that if you were getting your hopes up for the HTC Vive to hit shelves by the end of 2015, you’d be pretty disappointed. That’s because, like Facebook’s Oculus Rift or Sony’s PlayStation VR, the Vive wouldn’t be ready for the masses until at least a few months into 2016. In the case of Vive, the launch has now been pushed back until April of next year.
Amidst this news, Valve also made plans to ship at least a few more dev kits out by the end of the year in addition to a few headsets released to the “community.” Unfortunately, the broader public will miss out on this fun — at least until April 2016, that is. The head-mounted display may be equipped with the magic of two tracking stations and dual Wiimote-esque wand controllers, but a 2015 release seems to have proven difficult for the HTC-Valve collaboration initiative.
For an intended fluff effect, HTC’s announcement did its best not to focus on the delay. The important news was thickly veiled behind talk of the headset’s presence at various trade shows and press events including GDC, SXSW, MWC, and even Sundance. And, of course, this all comes in addition to a completely Vive-centric press conference to be held next week, on December 18, in Beijing.
HTC also mentioned that at the “start” of 2016, the company will deliver 7,000 second-generation Vive hardware kits for developers to tinker with. Those same models will be used to show off the tech at CES in January, though it’s unclear what HTC will focus on in terms of content for the device.
The company did not mention any additional information, including pricing, consumer shipment volumes, or specific release date information.
