When the price of the HTC Vive was revealed, I was a little taken aback. $800 is a huge investment, and that’s an extremely foreboding price point for anyone who doesn’t already own a high-end gaming PC. If you were going to buy a new console today, you might be hoping to pay around $300 for it. If you’re looking to build (or buy a pre-built) gaming PC, you’ll spend $300 on the graphics card alone if you want the thing to be VR-capable. With such high barriers to entry, I wouldn’t have assumed that many developers would be quick to jump on the Vive bandwagon and begin developing, but boy was I wrong.
Within 10 minutes after initiating pre-orders, over 15,000 HTC Vives were ordered. That’s over $12 million dollars worth of hardware out the door right out of the gate, and I’m sure that HTC has sold many more. We’re getting that 15,000 number from HTC’s Shen Ye, who tweeted. “Woah, more than 15k units in less than 10min.” I’m sure when we learn the actual numbers (if HTC releases them) that they’ll blow away our expectations. Personally, mine have already been shattered.
Source: VG 24/7