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Sign-ups for free HTC Vive VR dev kits are now available
The gaming community was both surprised and intrigued when Valve Corp and HTC Corp announced their virtual reality partnership earlier this year during HTC’s Mobile World Congress presentation. The HTC Vive VR headset is set to challenge Oculus VR in the small but rapidly growing consumer virtual reality market, but as with any new multimedia hardware – especially in the video game industry – the real selling points will be the content it supports.
That is why Valve announced last month that it would be offering free Vive developer kits for content creators, making it easier for Vive to hit the market with a robust library of games and other media. The sign-ups for those kits are now available.
The HTC Vive Developer Edition includes the VR headset and two VR game controllers (“one for each hand”). The kit also includes two base stations, which Valve says are used to “track your physical location (in spaces up to 15×15 feet) A gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor combine to precisely track the rotation of your head on both axes to an accuracy of 1/10th of a degree.”
The partnership between Valve and HTC mirrors that of Oculus and Samsung for Gear VR, but while Gear is a mobile-focused device, Vive is a high-end gaming device more similar to Oculus Rift.
The Vive partnership combines Valve’s experience and reputation in the gaming industry with HTC’s hardware manufacturing capabilities.
“We’ve been excited about VR, but we don’t have the software or brand recognition to go out and reach gamers,” Jeff Gattis, executive director of global marketing for connected products at HTC, told Fortune. “We have a history of seeking out partnerships where there’s a gap in our portfolio. Valve was looking for someone to bring their hardware to fruition, so it was a nice fit between what we do well and what they do well.”
Valve previously stated that the free dev kits would be available to content creators of all sizes, from small indie devs to triple-A studios.
If you are a developer interested in applying for a free HTC Vive Developer Edition, you can register for one here.
Image credit: HTC Corporation, HTC Vive from http://www.htcvr.com/
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