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HTC finally gives in! The Vive price cut has arrived

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
This news just came in...

HTC Vive Now $599, Gets A Permanent $200 Price Cut

all that technology came at a premium price that has, until right now,
remained at $799 for the Vive headset, two motion controllers, and two
base stations for tracking. Other than a few flash sales and minor
discounts it’s been stuck at that price.

The updated package, priced at $599 for everything mentioned above, includes download codes for Richie’s Plank Experience, Everest VR, and Tilt Brush on Steam, as well as a one-month subscription to Viveport. The Viveport service has over 200 apps available, but you can only pick five to get access to over the course of a single month. It’s sort of like selectively renting content.


Interesting news considering it wasn't very long ago that HTC executives explained why a Vive price cut was unnecessary. Those reasons seem to still apply today, giving rise to insight that perhaps HTC feels the pressure from the aggressive Oculus pricing in order to remain viable (and alive) in the high-end VR Market.

From E3 2017:

“we haven’t dropped the core price of the Vive because we think it offers the best room-scale [experience], hands down.”

O’Brien elaborated further on HTC’s perspective on the Vive’s price, saying that there are certainly price-sensitive customers who are looking for the lowest cost option, but there are also ‘value-sensitive customers who are willing to pay more if they feel they are getting better value out of their purchase;’ the latter is where a large portion of VR early-adopters fall, he said.


Sources:

https://uploadvr.com/htc-vive-now-599-gets-permanent-200-price-cut/

https://www.roadtovr.com/htc-explains-vive-price-cost-lowered-cut-discount/


*EDIT*
Latest damaging articles/discussions:

https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/comment/552854/#Comment_552854

465 REPLIES 465

DarkTenka
Trustee
But Vive is supposed to be expensive to show that it is a superior quality product?! ... What good is it going to be if its affordable? .. no one will ever buy it then!

RorschachPhoeni
Trustee
Counting in for Atmos73 to join the discussion. Thank god I stopped reading all the comments, because my anger vanished at some point. Now I am just bored to read the same shit again and again.

However: I expect to read Atmos73 explanation of HTC's strategic movements and why it will be good for all people on the planet (and for all the Vive owners in particular) in
3
2
1
Excuse my bad english. I speak to you through the google translator. 😛

bigmike20vt
Visionary
damn i was slow on the news hunting this morning and got properly beaten to the punch.
fab news for VR. no need to put a negative spin on it imo,  healthy competition between 2 essentially comparable products is good news for us,  consumers never win in a monopoly (just look at the dark period of gpus with the 8800GTX which went on and on and on without a price cut).

now users can just look at what they want, decide which features are their priority and make a purchase without price being the sticking point.
Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR 🙂

bigmike20vt
Visionary

Atmos73 said:

The question now is will the Oculus for £399 be the new norm? I think it will.


I hope so...!.  But i doubt it.  Oculus have software sales 3 or 4 times a year however so i would not be surprised to see the Rift (its not "the oculus" goddamn it 😉  ) reduced to £399 as a matter of course when each sale is on.
Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR 🙂

RorschachPhoeni
Trustee

Atmos73 said:

The question now is will the Rift for £399 be the new norm? I think it will.


http://www.techradar.com/news/oculus-rift-and-touch-bundle-get-a-permanent-price-drop

$499 in the US when the Summer of Rift sale ends
Excuse my bad english. I speak to you through the google translator. 😛

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
I suspect there might be further cuts or "enticements" (from Oculus and HTC) once the Windows MR headsets release towards the end of this year/early 2018.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

nalex66
MVP
MVP
It's a shame they didn't bundle in the DAS with the new cheaper Vive kit; it would have brought it a little closer to parity with the Rift for almost as good a price (compared to the post-summer-sale Rift).

Anyway, this will be good for pushing VR as a whole. Now there's a reasonably affordable option for those few holdouts who are so afraid of Facebook that they didn't get a sale-priced Rift.

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

kzintzi
Trustee

Atmos73 said:


nalex66 said:

It's a shame they didn't bundle in the DAS with the new cheaper Vive kit;


Hang on we've still got 4 months of the year left yet. HTC and Valve haven't played all their Aces yet.


I didn't Realise HTC/Valve were "still in the game" :tongue:

Though you are more than slightly incoherent, I agree with you Madam,
a plum is a terrible thing to do to a nostril.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Great news for VR, HTC had to do something because the sales advantage that they had was closing since Oculus reduced their price to $600 in March. The Rift is still a better buy unless you're living in a mansion and need a bigger trackable area but anything that gets more headsets out there is great for developers.

They still need to bundle in the Deluxe Audio Strap though imo, and when the Knuckles controllers release they need to replace the original Vive controllers with them but this is a great start.

bigmike20vt
Visionary

snowdog said:

Great news for VR, HTC had to do something because the sales advantage that they had was closing since Oculus reduced their price to $600 in March. The Rift is still a better buy unless you're living in a mansion and need a bigger trackable area but anything that gets more headsets out there is great for developers.

They still need to bundle in the Deluxe Audio Strap though imo, and when the Knuckles controllers release they need to replace the original Vive controllers with them but this is a great start.


i agree on the mounting system however  (and bare in mind i do not follow vive that closely) but.......

don’t valve make the "knuckles" not HTC?... if this is the case i would imagine they will work on all steam VR devices and not just the vive...... (ie the LG HMD when that launches)
.
And as its not a HTC product i dont see them being bundled with, or replacing the wands any time soon.

however I will happily accept i am wrong if you guys are more clued in on me than this!.
Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR 🙂