HTC Strikes Down Vive Cosmos Price Rumor, Confirming Sub-$900 Price Point

Jun 21, 2019

YouTube channel MRTV today reported an expected price of $900 for the upcoming Vive Cosmos headset, citing a “trusted industry insider.” Responding to the rumor, HTC tells Road to VR that the price is “incorrect (and high).”

HTC is slowly revealing more details about its Vive Cosmos headset which is due to launch in Q3; today the company revealed an updated headset design which features six cameras for inside-out tracking and showed that it can be equipped with headphones (in addition to its non-headphone audio solution). However, the company is still closely guarding other information like resolution, field of view, and price.

Following the info that HTC revealed today, YouTube channel MRTV reported a rumored price for the headset at $900, citing a “trusted industry insider.” MRTV’s Sebastian Ang qualified the rumor saying, “take this with a grain of salt. However, I believe the probability of the information being true is high.”

HTC was quick to strike down the rumor, and in doing so confirmed that the headset will cost less than $900.

“We appreciate the speculation on Cosmos’ price and functionality. What was reported today is incorrect (and high). We’re just getting started on what we’ve built with Cosmos and believe we’re delivering a product with great value, functionality, and the ability to grow with you over time,” a spokesperson told Road to VR.

The MRTV video also reported a rumored August shipping date for the headset, though HTC didn’t address that speculation. We reached out to MRTV for comment on their report.

Update (June 22nd, 2019): Sebastian Ang from MRTV shared the following with Road to VR after HTC’s response to the price rumor:

“The information I received was the alleged price in Euros and I wrongly assumed it might just translate to the same price in USD. But taking into consideration that we normally pay a premium in Europe (Vive Pro headset only was €879), you actually may expect a US price of around $800, if the information I received about the price in the Euro zone is indeed correct. I have updated that in my video description and thanks for allowing me to clarify this here as well. Hopefully we will learn about all the details from HTC themselves soon!”

– – — – –

The original Vive headset debuted at $800 when it launched in 2016 and has since come down to $500. However, price-shock was apparent among VR enthusiasts when the company revealed in 2018 that it’s next headset, the Vive Pro, would cost $1,400 for full kit, pushing it well out of consumer territory.

Cosmos meanwhile is seen as the company’s first real consumer followup to the original Vive headset (though HTC says it isn’t intended as the Vive’s successor); it’s clear from its comment on the price rumor that HTC is sensitive to the pricing concerns of potential customers, especially considering the $400 price point of Oculus’ new Rift S and Quest headsets.

With a launch set for sometime in Q3, it hopefully won’t be too long before we get an official price and release date for Vive Cosmos.

Ritual veality

he reported 900 euro’s.. So yes it will probably be less in dollars.
- Robert S
  
  BOTH of you were wrong and did not even watch his video. he originally flat out said 899 DOLLARS. in fact he said it more than once in his video and I stopped watching after that.
Jarilo

Sebastian just wanted them views though, cause views means Ferraris, chicks, and blow. It will be less….but it’s 2880×1600 LCD RBG most likely, my prediction.
- Bob
  
  Resolution is one thing but what type of panel they are using is another important thing to consider. I’d probably wager it’s an LCD panel considering it’s cost effectiveness and sub-pixel arrangement.
  - Jarilo
    
    It is LCD
    - Immersive_Computing
      
      Rumours point towards same panel as used in HP Reverb
      - Jarilo
        
        Those are LCD
    - Charles
      
      I hope not. Maybe they figured out how to make a 1600p RGB OLED screen. Like the PSVR but higher resolution.
      - ben
        
        LCD 2880×1700 90fps
- Who’s this?
  
  My concern is the mobile option. Will they try to get Quest devs to port to VivePort on Android?
- Ben
  
  They have said that it will be 2880×1700 LCD
  90 fps and (this one is weird) 40% improved lens clarity
M0rph3u5

“We appreciate the speculation of cosmos’ price and functionality. What is reported today was inaccurate and high” a spoke man told Road to VR. “The accurate price is 899.99 US dollars” he added with a fiendish smirk on his face
- Who’s this?
  
  I will admit, you made me laugh. LOL
  - alma
    
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- Sven Viking
  
  I came here to post the same joke. Being serious, though, I haven’t expected it to be cheap but $900 seems implausible to me.
- Kevin Wei
  
  The spoke man is correct if the price is 899.99, lol
TonyVT SkarredGhost

HTC has said that it will be a headset targeted at consumers…900€ would be an absurd price
- Immersive_Computing
  
  @tonyvtskarredghost:disqus
  
  $699?
XL

He reported $800, not $900.
Ugur Ister

I think at this point HTC has to price it below 500, and ideally even a good bit below that, to make any bigger dent in the consumer space.
- impurekind
  
  I’d say there’s zero chances of that happening.
  - Ugur Ister
    
    Whether there is a chance for that happening depends on whether HTC wants to make profits more with the headset alone or also foster their content platform and make profits from that.
    In either case, expectations for what are acceptable prices for different feature levels gear have shifted a lot since 1-2 years ago.
    While the Vive seemed on the expensive end but still a nice offering for the price when it was first released, then Oculus lowered the price of the Rift (while also making it more attractive by adding the touch controllers), then released the Quest and Rift S at much lower price points to begin with.
    Now the Vive itself already seems way more “overpriced” than it did at launch (despite the price was lowered a bit since) and the Vive Pro and Vive Pro Eye are basically priced way outside what most consumers would pay.
    At this point i think HTC needs to come in in price between Quest and Index pricing, while being considerably lower priced than the Index with controllers but without base stations, and the lower they can price it, the closer they can get to more mass market appeal like Quest/ Rift S can approach, whereas the higher they are priced, the more they then compete against the Index, where they have some downsides as Valve can push the Index heavily on Steam, next to having some other pros like the Index controllers.
    
    So yeah, if you’d ask me if i find it likely that HTC will price it at 400-500 with this feature set, then i would say: no.
    
    But if you ask me what i think they have to do to get any chance of halfway bigger end consumer adoption, then yes, i totally think they would have to price it at 400-500 max at this point, as the Quest is already making major inroads at low price point and will likely continue to do so, the Rift S is on the more affordable end, too and the Index seems to snag up most of the higher end price enthusiast crowd, so the Cosmos better hits at something as low above Quest/Rift S pricing as possible.
    
    Given HTC’s track record they overpriced the Vive Pro and Vive Pro Eye massively, so one could think they will again go extremely high price, but maybe those not taking off in big way for end consumers has made them rethink the situation.
    - Sparh4wk
      
      600 will be fair price..
      - Ugur Ister
        
        I would see that price as not totally unreasonable but also clearly already a good bit higher than what most not hardcore enthusiast end consumers would pay at this point.
    - impurekind
      
      I agree with you on that.
    - Trenix
      
      You’re comparing consumer products to enterprise products. They didn’t hide the fact that Vive Pro and Vive Pro Eye were enterprise products. Let them make their high end products, this only allows them to learn and improve VR in the future by finding ways which allow them to use new technology and reduce costs for consumer VR headsets. Cosmos seems like it’s going to be exactly that.
      - Ugur Ister
        
        You’re right and i don’t have anything against them also working on high end (enterprise) devices, the more progress, the better, so we share that view and i do actually applaud them for pushing for progress a lot there.
        And fair enough, one shouldn’t generalize Vive Pro and Vive Pro eye not taking off, they probably did ok for VR Arcades and similar, so if one says they didn’t take off bigtime in adoption at those price ranges better to clarify that is “only” among consumers, so i’ll watch out regarding such statements in the future to not over generalize, thanks for the reminder.
        That all said, and while, again, i appreciate max progress, too with some high end options available, too, at the same time i think especially the Vive Pro will have a tougher time since the Valve Index was announced (while the Vive Pro Eye has the eye tracking differentiator which may be an additional interesting factor for those already working on foveated rendering or eye tracking in other way using fields).
      - Trenix
        
        Maybe, but Vive Pro Eye went further into tech and enterprise, so Vive Pro is already outdated. Something tells me that Vive is gonna wipe the market for consumers soon, because when it comes to high-end VR, they’ve been leading. If Valve Index truly has issues with god rays as some said, I don’t think they’ll compete very well despite having nice specs.
        
        God rays are unbearable and there is no way I can justify a steep price tag for something that other cheaper headsets have already fixed. Even Samsung Gear VR doesn’t have that issue.
      - Ugur Ister
        
        I don’t have the Index yet, so can’t say much about that right now.
        I already have the index controllers though and they are great =)
        
        There are a bunch of different headsets now and a few more to be released throughout the year which are quite different in price ranges and specs pros and cons, i find it too early to give a verdict which ones will do how well mid to long term, with VR being to a large part also a visuals/optics thing, i have to try them all before i can rate them better, there are too many aspects one can’t tell for sure based on just a specs list sheet.
        
        Regarding the Vive headsets already out in the market, me personally i’d appreciate it is HTC over time just stops selling the og base Vive, sells the Vive Pro at the current price of the OG Vive and sells the Vive Pro Eye at the current price of the Vive Pro. But that’s just me doing a bit of wishful thinking on that one =)
- Trenix
  
  Yeah no, the cheaper the price, the crappier the product. Just look at the Rift S. I’d happily pay $500-800 for a product that doesn’t have to compromise performance and quality. This is why the Quest exists, for people who will pay less for a crappy product. I’m tired of trade-offs.
  - Andrew Jakobs
    
    Except the Quest is an excellent standalone headset for the price it’s released. Rift S is not really bad either (with a few adjustments it could have been better), but it’s not what you expected.. Don’t expect a real nextgen headset for $500 or less anytime soon..
    - Trenix
      
      I’m willing to spend up to $800 for the entire VR kit. That’s my limit and it hasn’t changed. Valve Index is $1,000 I believe. I rather just wait for a sale. VR are is great, but it shouldn’t be cheap or about the price of a computer that’s powering it.
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  Why? I think it will be the same price as the HP Reverb (almost same tech). If you really think it will be well below the $500 you aren’t being realistic..
  - Ugur Ister
    
    As i wrote in another comment longer above, i don’t expect them to release it at such a low price, my statement was more about what i think the price would have to be to get bigger more regular consumer appeal than appeal for only enthusiasts or professional/ enterprise users.
The Bard

Sub 900? Now that’s for free! What a sick company. HTC should go bankrupt.
The Bard

Let’s wait for Samsung releases soon. These will eat Index, Quest, Cosmos and all that crap.
- iPadCary
  
  Haha, yeah right. teehee
- Daven Bigelow
  
  Sadly not, I think Oculus Quest is the best standalone we will see this gen
  - The Bard
    
    “This gen”. What is this gen? HP Reverb was released and it is next gen already. Samsung VR will be next gen too when released. This or next year.
    - Daven Bigelow
      
      Next gen is:
      Wireless
      Eye tracking
      Foveated rendering
      And ideally facial expression tracking
      All while being: cheaper, lighter, longer lasting battery life
      
      Everything up to that is just Gen 1.99999 and below
brubble

Would never buy HTC product no matter the price.
- Ted Joseph
  
  I like their products! They are awesome.
Niklas Fritzell

899?
Callsign Vega

If this doesn’t have the 2160×2160 panels used in the Reverb, PASS.
- Jason Lovegren
  
  Look at their inside out tracking. I count only two front cameras. Look at the cosmos cameras, I count six placed on the headset logically. If the tracking is off, that’s so much worse then less pixels. I’m just a little bummed it’s made by HTC since their customer support is shit. However if they add the wireless dongle and have it at 800 dollars, I’ll buy one.
MW

Consumer oriented?? A peripheral for a price of two newest game consols? Good joke HTC. Every price over 500usd will be much too high. Production is too costly? Then it is just too early for VR to be.
Nope, wrong

Sub-900. So 899.
Yoshi Kato

I think the statement “We’re just getting started on what we’ve built with Cosmos …” stands out. I read that as “We saw what the competition is bringing, and we had to go back to the drawing board”. The $900 price point may have been accurate a few months back, but had to be adjusted so that they remain competitive.

I honestly believe that if not for the Valve Index and HP Reverb, they would have already announced specs and pricing. Oculus/Facebook is more about selling user data to their business partners than bringing out cutting edge tech, so I doubt HTC even flinched at the release of the Rift S.
- dude
  
  You really haven’t been paying attention to VR if you don’t think the Oculus Quest isn’t cutting edge.
  - Henrik ‘Walter’ Peytz
    
    What’s cutting edge about it? It’s basically a loaded Samsung Gear VR without a simcard. I’m not saying it isn’t a robust headset that wont satisfy people, but in the end it’s a consumer headset and not cutting edge like the XTAL or the Index.
    - Steve Biegun
      
      What’s cutting edge about Index? Not saying it doesn’t have awesome features, but if you don’t want to say that Quest is cutting edge as the first good 6 DoF wireless consumer headset I wonder what you think falls in that category.
      - Henrik ‘Walter’ Peytz
        
        Capacitative fingertracking and off-ear-headphones are pretty cutting-edge for a VR-headset. The display itself is not completely revolutionary, but it’s a tradeoff between quality and performance. Sure, Pimax 8k has an insane display in terms of resolution, but if you can only run Beat Saber fluidly on it without having a dedicated 2080ti for each screen then it’s a waste; so in those terms the Index is on the cutting edge being the best overall experience within the enthusiast-market on current hardware.
        
        Quest, OTOH, I dislike for several reasons:
        1. It’s Facebook and they’re running a walled garden on their products.
        2. 6DOF is neat (especially coupled with wireless), but it still has occlusion problems (behind your head, back and aiming a gun, for instance). You may not care about this as the user, but people who observe you spassing out do (I know it’s small gripe, but this really should be sorted out by now instead of reproduced).
        3. It’s (relatively) cheap and (relatively) low performance hardware, so it’s going to saturate the market, thereby fragmenting the VR-developers into those that go 100% PCVR, and those who cut down on the polys/details so it can run on the Quests ARM-processor.
        4. Devs will waste time stripping their creations down to the barebones so it can run on the Quest like, for instance, VRChat has done. The idea sounds neat, crossplatform play and all, but it sucks if you as PCVR-user tries to appear as particular character and half the people just see a grey robot placeholder because their HMD can’t render it. It just leads to confusion. VR-game development thus becomes a race to the bottom where the winner is the one who churns out the most (basically) mobile games they can instead of creating great games.
        5. The above will happen all over again once they churn out the next Quest that’s not x86. I wish they’d sort out the kinks first (Hardware on par with the PC market, best FOV, Good resolution, wireless that can carry such a signal, perfect 6dof tracking) and then jump on the mass-audience market. As it is now there’s some serious tradeoffs to be made going for the affordable headsets, but first-time VR-people wont know the difference if their first headset is a Quest.
        
        I’m sure the Quest is a nice headset, especially the wireless aspect of it, I just think it’s a bit early to have the VR-version of the 80’ies console wars already :)
      - No Spam
        
        Just because you dislike something doesn’t mean it’s not cutting edge. And just because one thing is cutting edge, doesn’t mean another isn’t.
        
        Quest’s true inside-out 6DOF, including hand controllers, in a completely stand-alone package is, in fact, cutting edge. Nothing else on the market does it, it advances the state of the art in form factor, performance, and usability, at a ridiculously low price. I don’t know what else you would need for something to be cutting edge.
        
        Index’s controllers, speakers, and combination of lens angle, refresh rate, and design, providing best-in-class FOV and comfort, is also cutting edge – on a different feature axis than Quest.
        
        Almost all of your arguments could be made against multiple quality/capability tiers in graphics cards, CPUs, TVs, or many other luxury/consumer goods.
        
        Multiple markets = more buyers = more development for VR.
      - Henrik ‘Walter’ Peytz
        
        Oh please: Vive Focus, Lenovo Mirage Solo and Pico Neo has done 6dof before the Quest, they just use wireless instead of cameras for the tracking, that doesn’t make them “untrue inside out tracking”.
        
        You can’t slap on “Cutting edge” and “State of the art” to something _within certain pricepoint_, anymore than you can say a Tiger Handheld is a cutting edge device within the 10$ electronic handheld market when somebody’s playing on a GameBoy across the table.
        
        Other GPU’s CPU’s TV’s etc. share the same underlying architecture within their groups, meaning if you buy content for a given group, all the hardware can run it or at least try to process the software/stream/video etc. OTOH I, if I had an Index, wouldn’t be able to run Quest software because of the ARM-architecture, and neither would I be able to run PCVR-software on the quest for the same reason + hardware requirements, forcing devs to either 1. choose one over the other (pushing one to the side) or 2. develop for both (wasting time on recreating the same thing) or 3. Butcher the PCVR-version and release the same cut down experience compiled for both PCVR and Quest. I hope for 1 in favor of PCVR, but I think both of us know it’ll predominantly be a mix of 2 and 3.
  - Alessandro Cima
    
    It isn’t cutting edge. I’ve been paying attention to VR and the Quest is a bag of doo doo.
- PJ
  
  Not cutting edge, The Quest says high
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  Oh please stop the nonsense with ‘selling user data to their business partners than bringing out cutting edge tech’. Really, why are people being so unrealistic, thinking it’s easy to sell a headset for max $399-$499 to consumers. Get your head out of your ass and start being realistic, the headsets which have your wanted specifications aren’t possible to produce for even around $1000, it’s much higher, and to drive those headsets with the visuals you want, you’ll need at least two RtX2080ti’s.. If you’re targetting consumers, the Quest (and even the Rift S) are what is to be expected for the price they are launched (AND have the companies have some small profit).
  - Yoshi Kato
    
    Me saying that Facebook sells user data is like saying the sky is blue. The point of my post was to highlight the fact that the competition probably caused HTC to rethink the Cosmos and bring out a more competitive headset. In my opinion, Oculus is not leading innovation in the VR field so HTC probably didn’t change their strategy based on a slightly tweaked Lenovo WMR headset (Rift S).
    
    If all of the people who supported Oculus back in their Kickstarter days is happy with the company in it’s current state, then I think that’s great. I just think their focus has changed since being purchased by Facebook.
    - Andrew Jakobs
      
      Oculus goal was to bring VR to the masses for low prices (nothing more, nothing less), and THAT’s exactly what Facebook is doing with their Rift,Go,Quest,Rift S. And again, it’s pretty hard at this point to deliver an ‘innovating’ headset for a consumer price ($400-$500). The Quest might be considered innovating, as it’s a pretty affordable VR headset. It’s just unrealistic to assume they’ll bring a real ‘innovating’ headset out for $400-$500. But you have no idea what they are doing in their labs, what we’ve seen already presented (as prototypes) seems pretty innovating to me. HTC isn’t innovating with their new headsets, Valve isn’t innovating with their Index, HP isn’t innovating with their Reverb, so with the current/soon to be released headsets, there isn’t a single company that has an actually innovating (consumerpriced) headset.
ShiftyInc

So the headset alone is around 700 again and then you got to buy all the other stuff so you still come down to around 1100. Nice mainstream price i would say….
Adderstone VR

So they’re gonna sell it at $599 excluding headphones($299) and the extra two cameras will be an optional extra at $299 as well?
Jerald Doerr

(though HTC says it isn’t intended as the Vive’s successor)

looks kinda cool… But this line puts my brain back in check.
Moe Curley

The headset is $499, the $900 quoted was for the 30 day customer support package.
- ben
  
  where did you get that from
Ted Joseph

Does anyone else here wish the Quest had the halo headset design? I cant seem to get the head strap to fit comfortably on the Quest….
- PJ
  
  My friend put a HTC audio strap on his Quest, says it’s amazing
Gonzax

LCD is not a downgrade
- brandon9271
  
  I’ve never seen an LCD with the contrast ratio of an OLED or the black levels either. Maybe you know something I don’t
  - Gonzax
    
    Bigger clarity, more subpixels, lower persistence, better quality overall. Who cares about blacks when everything else is much better and your eyes will get used to the blacks in a couple of days, anyway.
Trenix

I’m glad they added more cameras, way more inclined to buy it now.
The Bard

It will not be 900$. It will be 899$
Sion12

$899.99?

HTC Strikes Down Vive Cosmos Price Rumor, Confirming Sub-$900 Price Point

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