Update: Happy Vive Day! It’s Vive’s birthday, so you can get all the freebies and promotions listed below for the rest of the day. The free month trial of the subscription service is expected to be available at any time, though.
Original story: Oculus hosted an extensive sale to mark the Rift’s first anniversary last week, but it looks like HTC is going one better.
The company is celebrating the one year anniversary of launch of its Vive VR headset on April 5th with ‘Vive Day’. There HTC will launch a long-anticipated software subscription service, and host promotions for VR fans both old and new.
Kicking things off is the launch of the Viveport Subscription service, the first of its kind for VR storefronts. Every Vive owner is going to get a free months’ access to this service in which they’ll be able to download five of a specific set of over 50 titles from HTC’s digital store. Confirmed launch titles include TheBlu, Richie’s Plank Experience, Everest VR, Fantastic Contraption, and Mars Odyssey. That one month trial is expected to be available for the foreseeable future. After your free trial you’ll be able to pay $6.99 a month to again download five titles which can either be apps you’ve previously selected or new ones. We’ve put together a list of recommended apps to try with your subscription here.
A common criticism of VR software is how much value it offers, with some experiences only offering 30 to 120 minutes of content but still charging $10 or $15 at least. Seeing how consumers react to this subscription model, then, will be hugely interesting.
Next up for existing Vive owners is a free game, Arcade Saga, which is the first title released under the Vive Studios publishing arm. It’ll be available to download at no extra cost from Viveport on April 5th. For those still interested in getting a Vive, HTC will again slash the price from $799 to $699 for one day, which it’s done for promotions like Black Friday before.
We’ll have our own coverage of the Vive’s anniversary over the course of the week, so make sure to check back on Wednesday.
