HTC Vive gets substantial price cut from $799 to $599 (£599)

[HEXUS]

A summer sale event has the Oculus Rift + Touch at $399, but it will be back at $499 soon.

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[shaithis]

Now that's a bit more palatable. If I hadn't been bought one for Christmas, I would have got jumpy now!

[gordon861]

So does this mean that the version two of the Occulus and Vive are coming out for Christmas?

[big_hairy_rob]

Still twice what I am willing to even remotely consider, not that there are enough games to even warrant that. I'm beginning to think that the VIVE is going to go the way of the Betamax...

[tonyd2233]

Just not compelling enough, and yes, I've paid Game whatever to spend 20 minutes using the thing...

[Wrinkly]

Problem for HTC is that the Rift + Touch beats the Vive both in price and quality. The Rift is lighter, is not as hot to wear and has better lenses. You still have to add $99 to the Vive just for a decent headstrap with audio which the Rift has as standard.

[Rovad]

This is putting my monthly budget in close proximity to imminent danger

Never tried Vive. Is the price justified compared to Rift? I was thinking about getting Rift, but now I'm not sure. any more.

[DemonHighwayman]

@Rovad - It depends if roomscale is something you definitely want. Vive for easy dependable roomscale, Rift for anything else. I have a Rift myself which I paid full price for, anyway people don't realise you can still get up and move around a little even with just one sensor. Also a downside I don't think the Vive suffers (I could be wrong) is that if there is bright sunlight shining through a window on you or the sensors it screws up the tracking and makes using it unbearable.

[shaithis]

@Rovad - It depends if roomscale is something you definitely want. Vive for easy dependable roomscale, Rift for anything else. I have a Rift myself which I paid full price for, anyway people don't realise you can still get up and move around a little even with just one sensor. Also a downside I don't think the Vive suffers (I could be wrong) is that if there is bright sunlight shining through a window on you or the sensors it screws up the tracking and makes using it unbearable.

I use my vive in very low light fine.....

I find roomscale is massive personally, VR without it (unless its a cockpit game) seems pointless to me.

[Percy1983]

@Rovad - It depends if roomscale is something you definitely want. Vive for easy dependable roomscale, Rift for anything else. I have a Rift myself which I paid full price for, anyway people don't realise you can still get up and move around a little even with just one sensor. Also a downside I don't think the Vive suffers (I could be wrong) is that if there is bright sunlight shining through a window on you or the sensors it screws up the tracking and makes using it unbearable.

I use my vive in very low light fine.....

I find roomscale is massive personally, VR without it (unless its a cockpit game) seems pointless to me.

This the interesting point I would say the vive is slightly better for full on room scale but not any better on just about every other front.

To me room scale has no interest as the room I use isn't big enough and to even the biggest rooms are not big enough as it limits you game/experience to the size of said room. I have seen some cleaver implementations to get around this but they can't work in every game.

They best way I can explain it is like the first time you played wii tennis and was swinging you arms around, once the novelty had gone you sat back down and flicked your wrist to hit the ball. Like wise with room scale once the buzz of the re-skined wave shooters has gone you are left with a headset not as good as the rift for everything else.

On all that you can do room scale with the rift with the 2 sensors but its recommended you get a third which is still cheaper than the Vive. Likewise as somebody else mentioned you will need the vive pro audio strap to be on par with the rift to which the rift built in audio is amazing.

[DemonHighwayman]

I use my vive in very low light fine.....

I find roomscale is massive personally, VR without it (unless its a cockpit game) seems pointless to me.

Yes low light works great with the rift too, it's just if you are in a room with bright light everywhere the rift has problems. I have never had the chance to try a Vive so roomscale is something I don't miss. I can try roomscale because I now have the occulus touch, but I don't have the space and have not seen any games worth setting it up for*.

* I find this a problem too, all the usual games reviews outlets don't seem to care about VR reviews anymore, for the first 8-12 months they made sure to cover some of them but they all seem to be treating VR as a fad from the past now.