HTC has announced a permanent $200 price drop for its Vive virtual reality headset, bringing its cost down to $600. This development arrives just as Oculus’ Summer of Rift promotion is coming to a close, putting the devices in serious competition. The Rift with Touch will rise back to $500 — in a slimmer bundle that discards some extras — after its promotion ends.
All Vive purchases come with a free trial for the Viveport subscription service, which allows users to sample up to five games every month. The headset is also bundled with some free software — the ever-popular Tilt Brush by Google, Everest VR, and Richie’s Plank Experience.
“Our goal at Vive has always been to offer the best and most advanced VR system and drive mass market adoption for VR across the globe,” said Cher Wang, HTC’s chairwoman. “We’re continuing to deliver on that commitment with this new price for Vive, making VR more accessible to a broader audience, and driving the entire VR industry forward.”
“It has been coming for a long time,” Rikard Stieber, the president of Viveport, told Digital Trends. Even as recently as June 2017, HTC officials remained bullish that the Vive wouldn’t be getting a significant price cut any time soon — but make no mistake, this is a serious shot across the bow of Oculus.
“We’re the leading player, and we’re definitely the undisputed high-end system,” said Stieber. “We don’t necessarily look too closely at the competition, so we’re kind of playing out our own strategy.” He did note that different companies offering different headsets is a boon to the wider VR ecosystem.
HTC has high hopes that lowering the price of the Vive will make the hardware more accessible to new audiences. Many gamers have been interested in VR from the start, and now that cost isn’t as much of as a barrier to entry, there’s hope many of them will decide to jump in.
“There’s always this early adopter in the family or in the household that pushes it,” Stieber explained. “But I do think that VR will be for the entire family — it doesn’t matter if it’s for the gamer kid, or if it’s the creative girls in the family, or if the mom wants to have a fantastic experience. I think it will be much more mainstream than it is today.”
All that being said, the price drop is coming at a great time for gamers who have been holding off making the jump to VR. It takes effect today — and with Fallout 4 VR and Doom VFR set to drop over the next few months, the Vive is a very tempting prospect at $599.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.