A new standalone HTC Vive headset of the next generation will be launched in 2021.
Alvin Wang Graylin, president of Vive in China, revealed this in an interview with TeliportMe last month (as seen by Nathie), two weeks before HTC itself presented a possible new hardware reveal. Asked if the company would launch a competitor for Oculus Quest this year, Graylin replied: “I think we said in the past that we would launch a new AIO [all-in-one] this year. I don’t think it would position you as a Quest competitor. I think it is our next generation freelancer, we will have one this year, it will be a great product. “
New standalone HTC Vive headset on the way
Graylin declined to provide specifications for the new device, but proved that it was better than HTC’s current products “from all perspectives” and that “it is probably better than what is available from any vendor today”. Well, that is quite a statement.
It is very possible that this standalone product and the new product that Vive’s Twitter is bringing about are the same, but it could easily be something else. To begin, many of Vive’s recent taunts around last week’s tweet suggest something focused on VR tracking. In addition, as president of Vive in China, Graylin’s comments may not necessarily be directed to a product that will launch worldwide, at least at the beginning.
Anyway, there is a lot to choose from here. First, Graylin calls the standalone version of the “next generation” of the company, which may mean that it is a direct successor to Vive Focus. In the West, the Focus was launched as an enterprise-grade device with no consumer option, which would explain why this new standalone may not be a competitor to Quest, even though its specifications actually outperform Facebook’s headphones. If it’s a corporate device, the kit is likely to be very expensive to compete with the $ 299 Quest 2. Focus was also launched in China months before it reached the rest of the world.
We will have to wait until HTC is ready to reveal everything about that front. Until then, what would you like to see in a new standalone HTC Vive headset? Let us know in the comments below!