HTC quietly announced pre-orders for the Vive VR headset will begin Feb. 2016. CEO Cher Wang revealed why the device's launch was delayed.
Last week, HTC said the Vive's launch was delayed until April next year. The Taiwanese smartphone maker said 7,000 second-gen development kits will roll out prior to this, as Franchise Herald reported.
The same statement was later updated to say that Vive pre-orders will begin "from the end of February," according to VR Focus. As the website noted, the original announcement which is still up on Facebook didn't mention that date.
"Hopefully this means that final release and pricing information will also become available in February," it said.
HTC had earlier planned to launch the Vive VR headset later this year in "limited quantity" but the said announcement pushed it back into next year. But recently, CEO Cher Wang went on record to say that the device was in fact ready to ship.
"It was a tough decision to make, as we could have started to ship Vive this month," she said, as quoted by Taipei Times adding," but after discussing it with Valve, our strategic partner, we decided that we can offer a more technologically advanced product if we postpone it for another quarter."
According to the publication, Wang "understood public disappointment over the delay." However, the decision was made "to offer buyers a better user experience."
Road to VR noted HTC isn't really doing well financially although delaying the Vive's launch would give it more time to refine the VR headset. Field of vision and display resolution increases and other "drastic improvements" are reportedly out of the question though.
Developed in partnership with Valve, the HTC Vive uses room-scale position-tracking tech to distinguish itself from its rivals. The VR headset will reportedly go on sale April 2016 with pre-orders opening on Feb.
