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One of the big three players in virtual reality claims to have made a big tech discovery worthy of delaying the product.
HTC said earlier this week that its Vive headset, being made in collaboration with Valve, would miss its late 2015 release date and instead ship commercially in April 2016.
Now Engadget reports that HTC CEO Cher Wang has said that this decision was due to the discovery of "a very, very big technological breakthrough". So significant was the development that the team actually decided to scrap the current design for the headset and begin production of a new version incorporating the mystery tech.
Added Wang: "We shouldn’t make our users swap their systems later just so we could meet the December shipping date." When asked about rival headset Oculus Rift, Wang replied: "Why would I buy a handicapped product? You won’t like it."
A reveal for the headset looks pencilled in for CES next month.
Signs point to the Vive perhaps coming in at a higher price than either the Oculus Rift or PlayStation VR, which could retail for in the region of $300+ and 350 respectively.
The vanilla version of Samsung’s Gear VR, which was made in conjunction with Oculus, costs around 80, although it requires a compatible Samsung smartphone.
