HTC delays Vive release until April

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.

“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, HTC said it wouldÂ have at least some Vive headsets available before the end of this year,Â 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. 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.

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Maria Korolov

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.