How do HTC Justify the Vive Pro pricing structure?

Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
So I'm getting myself annoyed more and more as I look into this. I was browsing around at the Vive products coming soon etc and I ended up on the US Vive Website.

Vive Pro Full Kit - $1089 I went to check out and it worked out around £850. They don't ship to the UK.
Exactly the same kit in the UK - £1299

Vive Pro Headset - £799
Vive Full kit - £499

Difference between just the headset and the entire kit - £499

Who in their right mind would buy the Pro kit in the UK at the moment? I know the V2 sensors come with the pro kit but they're not as good as the V1 ones from what I'm reading?

HTC are really showing their greed with this product. The wireless tech is around the corner too but from what I can gather you'll need to purchase an additional battery to power it? Of course the HTC offering is a £80 premium part, on top of the no doubt £300-£400 wireless kit.

I'm considering upgrading my headset to the pro version, I'm not sure what to do with my non-pro headset though. Does it gather dust? I guess there isn't really a market for just headsets (Hence why HTC have been very clever with this).

My thinking at the moment is to either spend £100 on the deluxe headset, or spend an additional £700 and just get the new headset altogether. It's going to be an expensive year, I want either a 1080ti or a new 1180, the Vive Pro and potentially a new CPU/MB/Ram combo.

Decisions, decisions.
 
Rakk

Rakk

The Awesome
Moderator
One of my friends at work has a Vive - he got it quite early and was looking forward to the Vive Pro and was planning on upgrading - until the prices were released at which point it was just a case of 'not for that price!' (which some slightly more colourful language). He has looked into the headsets extensively and reckons it's just not worth it and said work friend is still young and still lives with his parents so has more disposable income.
The Vive Pro does seem to be excessively priced - 800 quid for just the headset - yeah right!

As a Rift user myself it didn't bother me, and I wasn't going to upgrade that quickly anyway but it does seem an excessive price
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
HTC are in major trouble across the board, tbh I don’t expect them to come out of it anytime soon and they’re gonna have to either start selling sections like the VR or go under.

It’s such a shame because the vive is without a doubt the superior product in VR (not including the new 8k versions from China)
 
polycrac

polycrac

Super Star
I just got the Vive pro (just the headset) as an upgrade from the Vive. Work paid for both (I use them to help students understand complex 3D functions), or I wouldn't have touched it. Even so, I only got it because we hit 'budget day' and the money couldn't be carried over.

It ISN'T worth the cash IMO, the screen is a little better, you are less aware of the pixels, but you can definately still see them. The headset doesn't feel any lighter but it is a lot more comfortable and easy to wear for extended periods. It's also a lot hotter to wear (which at the moment is a problem in the UK). The new version has an audio strap which is a minor improvement. Good for me as I pass it around large groups, and the old vive just had some earphones. If I was a home user the earphones would have been fine.

The main improvement is for industrial use, which *sort of* explains the high price tag - and that's all about the base stations. The new versions allow you to track multiple headsets, so you can potentially interact with other people locally, e.g. two player games. I've not tried the new controllers, they'll have to wait for next year's budget, if at all.

It is really frustrating for me - when the Vive first came out I was a total HTC fanboy because of it. It's why I got my first gaming PC (From PCS), as soon as the minimum specs came out! Since then I watched them take the best VR headset on the market and do... Well, very little with it. The stand-alone offering was looking to be very interesting but only launched in China, so I ended up getting the Mirage Solo to trial that instead. The whole thing screams of great electrical engineers and programmers being wasted as the management failed to grasp how to market it. I suspect that had HTC not been so short of cash, they'd have been able to push it more and keep the dominant position they briefly had.
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
The key for me is the UK cost though. If they're strapped for cash why not make it more affordable and more attractive to consumers in order to sell in the 10s of 1000s instead of in the low numbers that are expected.

How can they justify a price tag twice that of the US?
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
I've actually started to look at the Pimax 5k/8k offerings now (Note they aren't actually 5k/8K resolution). The 200° field of view really has me intrigued. I would happily trade off resolution for field of view.
 
polycrac

polycrac

Super Star
Pimax look to be the best - if I could have waited, I'd have gone for that. There was also a Windows mixed headset that looked pretty good, but again - the best one was only released in the States. Also, I think the US apply sales tax at the till, according to which state you are in, so the price difference probably accounts for this (the UK one includes VAT). Still, I agree, dumb all over to bother making it but only sell a handful. No way to exploit economies of scale properly.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
The_Scotster said:
I've actually started to look at the Pimax 5k/8k offerings now (Note they aren't actually 5k/8K resolution). The 200° field of view really has me intrigued. I would happily trade off resolution for field of view.
Click to expand...

Those are the ones I’ve got my eye on. Are they available over here at all?
 
polycrac

polycrac

Super Star
Road to vr has more detail:
"If you haven’t been following along with Pimax’s Kickstarter, you may have noticed we’ve been putting “8K” in quotes. This is done to indicate that the 8K name is just that, a name that doesn’t reflect the specs of the headset. The headset integrates dual 3840×2160 low-persistence LCD panels, so not 8K by any stretch. In our CES 2018 hands-on with the recent prototype (before M1), the headset did however boast an extremely wide field of view that at times seemed very promising. We’re hoping the kinks have all been worked out, as it’ll be the first wide FOV headset available on the consumer market."

https://www.roadtovr.com/pimax-starts-mass-production-phase-8k-vr-headset/
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
polycrac said:
Road to vr has more detail:
"If you haven’t been following along with Pimax’s Kickstarter, you may have noticed we’ve been putting “8K” in quotes. This is done to indicate that the 8K name is just that, a name that doesn’t reflect the specs of the headset. The headset integrates dual 3840×2160 low-persistence LCD panels, so not 8K by any stretch. In our CES 2018 hands-on with the recent prototype (before M1), the headset did however boast an extremely wide field of view that at times seemed very promising. We’re hoping the kinks have all been worked out, as it’ll be the first wide FOV headset available on the consumer market."

https://www.roadtovr.com/pimax-starts-mass-production-phase-8k-vr-headset/
Click to expand...

Doesn’t explain the 1440p input though.
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
SpyderTracks said:
Doesn’t explain the 1440p input though.
Click to expand...

Through some sources I was reading earlier it does indeed upscale. Release date is still TBC but spec wise it looks amazing. I'd much rather spend the money on that headset to work with my Vive accessories than I would the Vive Pro headset. It gets blown out of the water tech spec wise.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
polycrac said:
As far as I understand it, it upscales currently, with the option to run at higher native resolutions in the future, as graphics cards improve:

http://forum.pimaxvr.com/t/pimax-8k-vr-frequent-asked-questions/2958
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes more sense. So they limit the input resolution essentially dependant on the graphics cards capabilities, and then upscale if it’s not native using an on board processor... that actually very clever!

Thanks for the info, that one bit had me worried.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
The_Scotster said:
Through some sources I was reading earlier it does indeed upscale. Release date is still TBC but spec wise it looks amazing. I'd much rather spend the money on that headset to work with my Vive accessories than I would the Vive Pro headset. It gets blown out of the water tech spec wise.
Click to expand...

I couldn’t agree more, this headset should do for generations to come, whereas the Vive Pro is a single iteration leap.
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
I would go further and say its the iteration they should have released in the first place. I love my Vive, don't get me wrong, I'm just miffed with their pricing for the new tech knowing fine well they have you over a barrel. If you buy the new headset, you're left with a worthless headset that noone will want to buy 2nd hand due to the price of the accessories required separately. If you buy the pro kit thinking to sell your old gen, you'll end up further out of pocket as you're paying £500 extra for 2 controllers and 2 light houses that you have anyway and you will be lucky to sell the lot for £300.... putting you £200 straight out of pocket, with no backwards compatibility and a headset down.

It's just bonkers. I'm getting myself annoyed again [rollinglaugh]
 
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