BY AMITT MAHAJAN · AUGUST 10, 2016
I spent the last two weeks traveling in China visiting virtual reality companies and attending the annual China Joy conference. China has a very active VR ecosystem with a lot to learn but I came away with a clear key thesis:
China will be a major first market for VR. High-end VR adoption in China will be primarily driven by VR arcades. Partnerships with real estate developers will accelerate the build out of these arcades.
This thesis works in China but will likely not apply elsewhere due to infrastructure and cultural features unique to the Chinese market. There were several takeaways that lead to this conclusion:
Product takeaways
- Multiple VR hardware startups are building context specific hardware. While visiting China Joy, I saw dozens of examples of suits, guns, bicycles, and other physical accessories that pair with custom software to offer immersive experiences.
- Arcades are perfect for the current form of VR experiences which tend to be limited in depth and best experienced in short sessions.
- None of the headsets can compare yet with Vive and Oculus in latency and performance. That will change in the future but right now the software capabilities that provide a lot of the magic of VR are missing from the generic headsets.
- Oculus is non-existent here. The HTC Vive is dominant. This isn’t too surprising given HTC’s basis in the region, China’s focus on room-scale experiences, and Facebook’s absence in China.
- While mobile VR exists and will be a large market on its own, the number of PCVR and high-end VR headsets was notable. There’s a much larger focus on PC-based gaming here than in other Asian countries, even outside of VR. PC-based e-sports were very popular and had a large presence at China Joy.
Read the full article
