HTC delays Vive due to major technological breakthrough

HTC recently delayed the launch of its Vive VR headset to April 2016. Speaking at the Vive Unbound developers forum in Beijing, HTC CEO Cher Wang claimed that a major technological leap is the reason for the most recent delay. She didn't go into the details, but explained that about two weeks ago, Valve and her team made "a very, very big technological breakthrough".

Wang claims the new technology is so much better than the old that they decided to just skip the original version and ship this new one, albeit a couple of months later than previously anticipated. More details about this breakthrough are expected at next month's CES in Las Vegas.

The Vive VR kit is expected to cost more than the Oculus Rift, but HTC is confident it will provide a more complete user experience:

Regardless, it's safe to assume that this kit will cost much more than existing offerings due to its extra hardware, though Wang remains confident that people will prefer the Vive's more complete user experience, immersive feeling and quality of content. "Why would I buy a handicapped product? You won't like it." That's mainly referring to the Oculus Rift's lack of object tracking, though the exec acknowledged that from developers' perspective, they need these low-end platforms as well to achieve a sizeable market, which is also why HTC never even considered enforcing an exclusivity with Valve's SteamVR gaming platform right from the start.