Taiwanese device manufacturer HTC opened its much-awaited Vive VR virtual reality headset for pre-orders in 24 countries worldwide on Monday, February 29, 2016; and was soon overwhelmed by the interest of consumers in the still-unproven VR technology.

Sharing details about consumers' response to the Vive VR preorders, HTC has revealed that, in the first 10 minutes of the opening of the preorder page on Monday, more than 15,000 Vive VR kits were sold by the company.

The disclosure by HTC is noteworthy, especially given the fact that that the Vive VR headset is priced at $800; and it is essentially a PC peripheral -- to be worn by users over their eyes and ears -- which requires a $1,000 PC to work.

The requirement of a high-spec PC for Vive VR has specifically been noted by Steam on its Vive advertising page which recommends a processor minimum of "Intel i5-4590, AMD FX 8350 equivalent or better" and a GPU minimum of "Nvidia GTX 970, AMD Radeon R9 290 equivalent or better."

Meanwhile, the opening of the Vive VR pre-orders have made the device the second major high-end VR headset to hit the markets this year; after Facebook-owned Oculus VR announced the launch of its $600-priced Rift head-mounted display in January.