HTC Vive boss: Standalone headsets will justify first-gen VR’s hype

HTC has been roundly criticized for the high prices of its PC-tethered Vive virtual reality devices, but the company’s head of VR for China thinks the problem was overhype — an issue he believes will be solved with premium standalone VR headsets. As surfaced by UploadVR, Alvin Wang Graylin’s comments to Mobile World Live suggest that the company believes that its standalone Vive Focus will reverse its fortunes in the nascent consumer VR industry.

“I think when HTC first introduced its [Vive] product, and Oculus [released Rift] back in 2016, it was probably overhyped,” said Graylin. “People had to go and buy a big PC and set up a lot of wires, and so nobody did it.” For average people, he suggested, the “friction” of using VR was just too high.