While Meta and TikTok owner ByteBeat is fighting to become a high-end social media/metadata company that makes virtual or augmented reality hardware, HTC is reminding everyone that it has a place in gaming. Without offering any additional details, the company posted this simple teaser tweet on Thursday morning: “Go small or go home and play.” Hinting at the launch of a new small Vive VR headset, it included an image.
A brief HTC press release describes the tweet as a teaser for “a new headset,” noting that it’s been a year since the Vive Flow, HTC’s early attempt at a consumer VR headset that looks (sort of) like sunglasses.
Flow is the “first” headset under HTC’s Proton project, an ultra-compact headset HTC is discussing in 2020. Combined with the tagline on Twitter, it’s speculated to be something like the second generation of Flow, which the company hopes will be smaller, more stable and have a larger ecosystem of apps.
This approach will be in contrast to recent headset offerings from Meta and ByteDance. ByteDance just launched the Pico 4 VR headset, which has similar specs to the consumer-grade Meta Quest 2, with an emphasis on activities such as fitness and gaming. Meta is set to announce a new, higher-end headset on October 11, apparently dubbed Meta Quest Pro ( aka Project Cambria). HTC has plenty of capability in high-end VR – it sells the fairly powerful Vive Focus 3 for enterprise and location-based entertainment use. But HTC’s initial Flow is primarily designed to appeal to people who don’t really want a traditional VR headset, and a smaller headset might do that better.
For now, we don’t know when HTC will fill us in on these details – but it sounds like we’ll know more soon.
