HTC's Vive virtual reality headset appears to be off to a good start. Shen Ye, who works in HTC's VR division, tweeted last night that HTC sold more than 15,000 units of the Vive within its first 10 minutes on sale.

There's no barometer yet for VR sales figures

It's hard to know exactly what to make of the figure. These are the first Vive pre-orders, so thousands and thousands of people who may have been waiting over a year to buy the headset were rushing to get their order in first, meaning sales may have slowed dramatically in the minutes thereafter (as you'd expect with any high-profile preorder). On the other hand, the Vive costs $799 and requires a high-end gaming PC, so it's really only available to a limited audience. You can't expect HTC to have iPhone-like preorder figures.

The Vive has been getting glowing responses from, it seems, pretty much everyone whose tried one on. The headset doesn't ship until April 5th, putting HTC just behind Oculus VR's March 28th release date for the Rift. Preorders for the Rift, which is HTC's biggest competition right now, began in early January, selling for $599. Oculus hasn't revealed any sales figures, but company co-founder Palmer Luckey mentioned a few days after sales began that, “Preorders are going much better than I ever could have possibly expected."