Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: HRL, htc, vive, Vive Pro

HTC Releasing Vive Pro Starter Pack to Combat Complaints About the Price

Published Wed, 04 Apr 2018 17:45:22 -0500

The Vive is pretty much the uncontested best VR rig — the problem with it is the buy-in price and always has been. However, with the Vive Pro, HTC are attempting to make the initial price gouge a bit less painful. Today, the Vive team announced that they would begin offering a Vive Pro Starter Kit tomorrow.

The starter kit will include the Vive Pro headset, two Vive controllers, and two base stations for the low, low price of $1,100 USD. Both the controllers and base stations are the 1.0 models and are required to use the Vive despite not coming with the Pro at $800 USD.

The Starter Kit does mean you no longer have to buy the accessories separately, as they'd come to about $500 USD on their own. So you are saving about $200 on the total rig cost. However, while you might be able to convince yourself to spend twice as much money for the Vive Pro as you would for an Oculus or PS4, paying nearly triple is a bit of a steep jump. Now, the performance boosts with the Pro are definitely worth a price jump, but you get the accessories with the base Vive for no additional cost.

This may be a step forward, but not nearly enough of one to make the Vive Pro truly accessible to the average gamer. One of the biggest problems with VR in general is the initial adoption cost, and the Vive Pro is a bit excessive — almost unnecessarily so.

In addition, current Vive owners will get an extended 1-year subscription offer for Viveport, which is the Vive's internal VR game service, as well as some sweet Viveport credit if they do extend their subscription.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!