In an update to the company’s blog today, HTC has announced that the Vive VR headset for Valve’s SteamVR platform will be delayed until April 2016.

Announcing back in March that the HTC Vive would launch to consumers starting in Q4 2015—beating Oculus’ Q1 2016 release date—was ambitious, and perhaps a bit too much so for HTC and Valve.

Now HTC says that the Vive will not see commercial availability until April 2016, putting the Vive release date just into Q2 2016. So long as Oculus sticks to their Q1 2016 window, they may indeed be the first of the major VR headsets to hit the market.

The company has also confirmed that they’ll be launching a “second generation” of the HTC Vive dev kit at CES in January.

“In an effort to clear up speculation and misinformation surrounding the launch of HTC Vive this month we are excited to give the community an update on the status of HTC Vive. We remain committed to delivering the HTC Vive to a broader group of content creators and partners, and remain focused on delivering the very best experience possible for a consumer release,” HTC writes on its blog.

See Also: HTC – Consumer Vive Is “Gonna Look a Lot Different,” Modular Headphones, New Mounting System, and More

In addition to an April 2016 release date for the HTC Vive, the company says they’ll be making 7,000 additional developer kits available in the beginning of 2016. This jives with an earlier announcement by partner Valve, saying that the bulk of Vive units would ship in 2016.

The announcement is a delay, but ‘April’ also now the smallest release window yet announced among the major headsets. Oculus continues to maintain a release date of Q1 2016 while Sony says that PlayStation VR will launch in Q2. None of the three headsets have been priced.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Carl Usick

    I hate to pile on, but I also hate being lied to. It’s taking Oculus 6 to 9 months after showing their final consumer version to be able to sell them in mass quantities. April would be impossible even if they actually had a final version ready.

    • lanthas

      On slashdot.org, an intriguing user comment with supposedly internal information appeared, confirming that this will probably indeed not be the last delay: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8452495&cid=51086439

      • Anonymous Coward

        People are also saying that “leak” is obviously fake since a lot of the claims make no sense and seem to be fabricated out of thin air. It was most likely either a disgruntled vive fanboy with too much time on his hands or an oculus fanboy trying to take advantage of the situation and make them look worse.

  • Myrddin Emrys

    ‘April’ is a nice small target, that Valve will miss completely.

    I think Valve’s inability to meet deadlines (see Valve Time wiki entry) will overpower HTCs hardware experience.

  • CURTROCK

    I laugh in the general direction of all the Oculus/FB haters who gloated like morons that Oculus had missed the boat, after Valve announced a 2015 release. Now, with that out of the way, I applaud Valve & HTC for taking the extra time they need in order to release a better product. It’s not about who is 1st, it’s about releasing a good product that works well.

  • lanthas

    Welp, delays happen. I just wish they wouldn’t say they’re “excited” about announcing it.