Valve gets into virtual reality with HTC Vive

Well that came out of left field.

Though Valve has been teasing that it has some kind of virtual reality related announcement in store for the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the reveal of HTC as its hardware partner caught a few of us by surprise.

“Today we are going to present to you a virtual reality headset that will define the game,” HTC boss Peter Chou told journalists at its press conference ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday (1 March 2015).

Called the HTC Vive, executive director of global marketing at HTC Jeff Gattis announced that the headset would feature 90Hz refresh rate and 360-degree views.

He went on to promise that it would be the first headset with “full room scale”.

The developer version of the device will launch “this spring” (i.e. before May 2015), with Gattis adding that HTC will deliver a consumer product before the end of 2015.