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HTC Vive ditches the PC thanks to China's cloud VR service
One of the main obstacles to popularizing high-end VR amongst consumers is the total cost of ownership. HTC and Oculus have both done their part recently by slashing the prices of their VR kits to $599 and $499, respectively, but you'll still need to fork out at least another $800 if you don't already have a nice PC. That said, the lucky folks in China may soon no longer have to worry about the latter part. Over the weekend, HTC announced its partnership with Dalian Television and Beijing Cyber Cloud to launch the world's first cloud VR service for a commercial trial in Dalian, a city not far from North Korea. So rather than tethering a Vive system to a PC, it'll instead be hooked up to a set-top box with full access to the carrier's VR content store -- and not limited to just five apps per month like HTC's own Viveport subscription offering.
