Blame Brexit for the HTC Vive’s Crazy UK Price Hike

If it wasn’t bad enough that the EU Referendum divided the nation, a lot of UK citizens might now be priced out of escaping the fallout to a virtual reality world – the HTC Vive has seen its price rise by over £100.

Previously priced at £689, the headset will now cost a whopping £820 when posting and packaging is included. To put that into perspective, you can buy all of the current generation consoles combined for that money. Although we were lucky enough to get our hands on a headset before the hike, those of us that don’t have a HTC Vive might have to swerve it for the foreseeable future.

In a blog post, HTC didn’t outright blame Brexit, but seeing as the value of the pound plummeted to record lows following the result of the vote, it’s pretty clear what’s to blame:

“HTC continuously monitors and adjusts pricing to ensure we are providing our customers with the best value possible. Due to recent currency valuation changes and the current value of the GBP we are adjusting the price of the HTC Vive in the UK to £759 + P&P. The adjustment will come into effect on Monday 1st August.”

Wait until Boris Johnson hears about this.

In our first impressions piece from a while back, we were pretty impressed:

“Every new gaming system, and that is what the Vive is, needs plenty of great games at launch, some killer titles to show off what it can do. It doesn’t have that. Right now, all it has a re a bunch of demos and mini-games. Best thing, is that almost doesn’t matter because many are so impressive and completely prove how the concept of VR works, that you don’t need a huge sprawling game to be playing. The games will come, and many existing games are already VR compatible.”

What do you think? Will you still be buying a Vive?

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