‘Go small or go home’: HTC teases a new Vive VR headset
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It’s been a busy 12 months for HTC and it looks like the VR headset manufacturer has one last trick up its sleeve before the year is out.
HTC has already announced the HTC Vive Flow and Vive wrist tracker in October 2021 and January 2022 respectively and has Twitter (opens in new tab) to tease the release of another small VR headset.
“Go small or go home,” reads the tweet, which includes a shadowy image of the new product in question. “We’re working on something big… we mean small. It’s a new headset!” HTC then confirmed in the answers section.
A similarly vague press release – describing the HTC Vive Flow as the “first evolution” of the company’s “Proton project” – was sent to Ditching, suggesting that HTC’s next Vive headset could be the so-called second evolution of said project. can be.
The HTC Vive Flow is essentially VR goggles, but despite its innovative form factor, we found the headset to offer mediocre performance and limited immersion for its expensive price tag ($499 / £499 / about AU$675).
So HTC’s next Vive product would do well to bring a more capable VR experience to the table. We’d love to see the new headset take the best parts of its predecessor – the light and comfortable design of the Vive Flow remains its greatest strength – and combine them with some more impressive credentials under the hood.
It’s hard to say at this stage whether HTC can live up to that ambition by going even smaller in terms of form, but the company is definitely going against the trend by downsizing its product line. Both Meta and ByteDance have bolstered — or are about to bolster — their respective VR offerings with high-end headsets, so we’re curious about the target market HTC has in mind for its relatively bite-sized new project.
For more VR related content, check out our roundup of the best VR headsets you can buy right now. Or read the latest leaks surrounding Meta’s mysterious Project Cambria headset.