It’s been a busy time over in San Francisco for HTC Vive. The company has made several hardware related announcements so far during the event, mostly tied to the headsets it is bringing out this year. This morning the company confirmed that its standalone headset the Vive Focus which has already been launched in the Chinese market will indeed be coming to the rest of the world, with an international launch at some point during 2018. Before this the blue HTC Vive Pro, an update and upgrade to the standard HTC Vive consumer version, was finally dated for the European and American markets as well as a price revealed. This was combined with an announcement of a reduction in price of the HTC Vive.
Tuesday night however, at Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2018 the company was more focused on the software side of things, thanks to hosting its second annual Viveport Developer Awards (VDAs). Launched in 2016, Viveport is the company’s official app store for all things virtual reality (VR) and offers applications and videogames both separately and as part of a subscription service, something that is expected to be promoted even more – as it has been in China – with the release internationally of the Vive Focus. Since 2017 it’s been celebrating the very best the service has to offer and the 2018 edition saw the winners of a number of categories revealed all of whom will be featured during HTC’s panel at GDC.
Winners:
Entertainment Category
1st Place: The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone
2nd Place: The Wizards
Education Category
1st Place: OVERVIEW
2nd Place: Bartender VR Simulator
Arts & Culture Category
1st Place: The Kremer Collection VR Museum
2nd Place: Galactic Gallery
Enterprise Category
1st Place: Gravity Sketch VR
2nd Place: Primitive
Arcade Category
1st Place: REGENESIS Arcade DELUXE
2nd Place: BattleSky VR
Additionally, the awards for best Viveport experiences in China were also confirmed:
- Best Vive Game: Reboant
- Best Vive Immersive Experience: A.D. 2047
- Best Vive Industry Application: SpaceCode
- Best WAVE Immersive Experience: YoukuVR
- Best WAVE Industry Application: Vive Auto
VRFocus will keep you up to date with all the news relating to Vive, Viveport and VR as a whole throughout the week. Expect more from our team at GDC 2018 very soon.
via Mint VR