The pre-order countdown for HTC Vive is over, but if you’re still on the fence on whether to get that shiny new VR headset, you’re still not too late to pick one up for May shipment.
What’s more, according to a tweet by HTC VR product specialist Shen Ye, the company processed over 15,000 pre-orders for the Vive yesterday within the first 10 minutes of going live.
Excluding regional taxes and shipping fees, that means the Vive generated HTC over $11M of revenue in only 10 minutes—a mammoth effort for a single product in their entire lineup, which generated $200M ($6.5B TWD) in total company revenue for December 2015. While HTC’s numbers are impressive from a financial standpoint—which can be detracted by the notion that the device has been heavily subsidized—the fact that over 15,000 people were poised to pre-order the $799 headset at the exact same moment says much about the growing global awareness of VR.
VR fans new to the pre-order craze should note that Oculus Rift is currently queued out to July 2016, but at a $599 price tag. The missing piece here however is Oculus Touch, a natural input hand controller that is slated to arrive in Q3 2016 at a yet undefined price.
See Also: Including Controllers, Vive and Rift Could be Evenly Matched on Price
HTC Vive will be shipping with hand controllers for $799, making the two headsets relatively comparable in terms of technical ability once Touch comes later this year. The question of course is how long you’re willing to wait for the complete package, and how much money upfront you’re willing to part with.
The first wave of Vive shipments are set to release starting April 5th, although HTC hasn’t specified chronologically where individual pre-orders fit in the provided ‘shipping in X-month’ window.