HTC Vive has announced a Dh700 ($190) price reduction for Vive, making the virtual reality (VR) system available for Dh2,599 ($707).

All Vive purchases come with a free trial to Viveport Subscription, where consumers can choose up to 5 titles per month to experience, and copies of many of the most popular pieces of VR content today, including Google's Tilt Brush, 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, chairwoman, HTC.

“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. Vive’s game-changing technology, best-in-class content and unmatched global partners are fulfilling the promise of VR like never before. With highly anticipated titles, and the upcoming launch of Vive Tracker, there has never been a better time to embrace Vive, and enjoy the most immersive VR experience available.”

A winner of hundreds of technology and industry awards across the globe, Vive is the only product that offers room-scale VR out of a single box, and this version of Vive will be the unit in market for the foreseeable future. The base Vive package comes with everything you need for a quick room-scale VR set-up: 2 base stations for accurate tracking, 2 motion controllers for immersive VR experiences and new and improved connection cables and new materials that offer a lighter weight on the Vive headset.

According to a recent report from UBM, more developers are building experiences for Vive than ever before, and Vive was chosen as developers' top target when creating content.  With more than 3,600 titles available across Steam and Viveport and with new AAA content arriving soon, Vive will continue to be the platform of choice for developers and consumers alike. In addition, Viveport Subscription allows consumers to choose from over 250 pieces of content from a highly-curated offering, giving consumers another opportunity to discover the best VR content available.

According to Steam statistics, HTC Vive maintains a 60 per cent share of access to the Steam platform for high-end VR headsets.  Over the past year, Vive has maintained its lead by more than 20 per cent.

“This year has been a great one for HTC Vive as the business has diversified regionally and around the world. Apart from premium gaming and entertainment content, we have also seen more applications in the enterprise space, including those in automotive, healthcare, cultural, education and logistics industries, with partners seeing the benefits of increased support in the coming years,” said Nikitas Glykas, president of HTC Middle East & Africa.

"In our case, this has been driven by continued improvements to the core Vive hardware, the industry’s first VR subscription service and investments in new developer platforms. Vive is now at the forefront of the push to take VR to the mainstream.”

Vive is now available in leading retail outlets across the UAE and will be available later this week through the company’s new online e-store with free shipping. The e-store will also offer a full range of accessories. – TradeArabia News Service