New Images for 2nd HTC Vive Developer Kit Supposedly Leaked

Nice confirmation bias there. Having trouble imagining that people might not exist in the same arm chair warrior state as yourself? You expect answers for every post or with some urgency?

What it sounds like is that you are more emotionally invested into this than I am, and no that is not a compliment.

I will acknowledge your presence here has been compulsively obsessive in aggressively perusing anyone that offers anything but praise for HTC’s VR device.

The fact you felt the need to post 3 times in a row to ONE post, and one another day later really nails that statement home.

If you are not familiar with the subject of uncertainty and HTC, then I can only guess you havent been following along for any significant amount of time. HTC has trust issues with its target audience. When it was finally announced that HTC, a company bordering on bankruptcy would work with Valve in creating a headset… what came up was the uncertainty of the product and their ability to compete with Facebook backed Oculus.

Going in, HTC has neither the trust nor the market penetration as the competition. THE two things they did have going for them though was 1) Releasing a commercial version before Oculus, even with limited supply and 2) The Valve association. This isnt a game where the best product wins necessarily, but rather the one with the biggest market penetration and timing. Oculus comes out, and what do you see in the media? Oculus. Already HTC will have trouble pushing through that initial push, especially when information is lacking.

Oculus made an effort to set up its own convention here in Hollywood, to take and give questions/answers freely. It became very inclusive to the market, both in terms of consumers and content creators such as myself. When I went to Siggraph recently, did anyone spot HTC? No. But there were certainly a lot of Oculus Rifts, even the latest one in a highly prominent room with a window sponsored by Nvidia.

HTC has been offering very little, showing practically no effort where it counts. Already they are shakey grounds and this is a new technology, one that social media and PR play a huge role in adoption and attraction. HTC is treating the VIVE like their phones, and their phones are part of why they went downhill. So uncertainty is huge, both on who is making the content and who is consuming it. You need both for these devices to succeed. Its why Oculus made such a big effort to get devkits out to as many hands as possible.

At this point in time, there NEEDS to be some consumer VIVE information. No one can get anything out of HTC, and we just now know that we might see more at CES this upcoming January. Not really the best place for a VALVE device. Which leads to the next issue… target audience being neglected. HTC has not aggressively gone after the gaming sphere (games bring in more annual revenue than film, tv and music combined for their primary market) which is what VALVE is known for… instead we see them focusing more on medical and non gaming entertainment. Nothing wrong with that, but early adopters, the ones driving this technology will start with interactive entertainment (games).

The gaming audience needs to know what the consumer version will look like, how much it will cost, and why its not only a short term but long term investment. None of this is really on the table. Leaks like this one are drops of water in the desert of information, and when the leak itself is uncertain it doesnt inspire any confidence in the long term investment tied to HTC. They didnt show the same level of confidence as the competition. So what happens when you get a VIVE and shortly after HTC goes under. Well great, all the work invested into integrating the vive into pipelines and products gets hit hard, consumers might not see a new version much less get repairs if something happens, even if its not reasonable the sentiment matters. Confidence in a new form of media matters.

HTC hasnt escaped its history or its negative impression, and the VIVE was what they were betting on to do that.

You can feel free to disagree, but the fact is you would be a minority in that reaction. Not a lot of people are happy with HTC, from before and now after. Being on the brink of bankruptcy wont help one iota.