HTC Vive: VR headset pre-orders go live in February for April ship date

HTC's Vive virtual reality (VR) headset will be made available for pre-order on 29 February ahead of the planned release window in April. This comes a week after pre-orders opened for the Oculus Rift, a competing headset.

The report comes from The Telegraph and has been corroborated by a HTC spokesperson speaking to The Verge. The headset, which was developed with game studio Valve, is likely to be around the same price as the Oculus (£499) as they are both high-end pieces of technology.

Both the Oculus and Vive will work only in tandem with high-end PCs, unlike the other major virtual reality headset coming to the market this year – Sony's PlayStation VR (PSVR), which will work alongside the company's PS4 games console.

Earlier in January, HTC revealed a last minute developer kit that includes a camera in the front of it, opening up the opportunity for developers to include limited augmented reality (AR) options in their games and experiences. New controllers were also revealed.

No official pricing of firm shipping date has been revealed by HTC yet. Sony has yet to reveal its plans either but we do know the PSVR will ship during the first half of 2016. The Oculus will ship from 28 March.

At EGX in September 2015, IBTimes UK demoed all three of the major headsets (Samsung's Gear VR, which is cheaper due to its screen being a phone deserves a mention – it is the likely entry point for most over the next couple of years) and liked what we saw and played. We did raise some issues about how to best demo the tech, though.