HTC’s new Vive Flow headset reportedly launches this week

HTC is planning to release a new VR headset this week and is also working on its own metaverse-like virtual world, according to a report from Protocol.

Let’s start first with that new headset. It’s reportedly a standalone VR headset called the Vive Flow and is intended to be a media consumption device “with access to some casual gaming,” Protocol says. However, it won’t ship with controllers and will be less powerful than the Oculus Quest 2, Protocol reports. The Vive Flow will reportedly be announced at HTC’s October 14th event, which would make sense, as HTC is promoting the event with the “Go with the Flow” tagline.

The new metaverse space is apparently called Viveport Verse. According to a site about the service (which was live as of publishing this article), you’ll be able to make your own 3D avatar and explore “a variety of events,” but the space will also have an “NFT Showroom” and user-generated content “available soon.” You seemingly won’t need a VR device to visit Vivepoint Verse, though; the website says it will be compatible with desktop devices, laptops, mobile devices, tablets, and VR headsets.

We’ve collected screenshots of the Viveport Verse website in the gallery below, in the event that HTC closes access to it.

Grid View

It’s unclear how this new Viveport Verse space would differ from the enterprise-focused Vive Sync experience. It seems like Viveport Verse could be more of a series of virtual worlds of many kinds, perhaps similar to Facebook’s Horizon Worlds, as opposed to Sync’s virtual meeting spaces intended for work.