Image source @ Visual China
Wen | VR porridge
The metacosm is on fire. This wave of Facebook-driven winds grew louder and louder, and with the official renaming of Facebook to Meta at the end of October, the metaversal concept entered a continuous climax.
The historical recurrence after 7 years, the same capital restlessness, what is different?
Let's first push the camera forward: in 2014, Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR for $2 billion also detonated the domestic venture capital market: in 2015, the scale of domestic VR investment directly rose from 270 million to 2.4 billion, an 8-fold increase.
Seven years ago, the star company that hit the VR boom was Storm Technology (later renamed Storm Group). In March 2015, it officially landed on the domestic A-share market, and it gained 36 up and down boards, and the VR sector is an important concept to stimulate investors to pursue, which is inspired by the acquisition of Oculus, which was just laid out a year ago by Storm founder Feng Xin.
In November 2015, at the launch of the Storm Magic Mirror all-in-one machine, it was announced that the goal of "three 10 million" to be achieved in the next year: to promote 10 million Chinese VR users; to give 10 million monthly share to game partners; and to give content partners a monthly share of 10 million;
Looking back, this was clearly an overly optimistic goal. Just one year after the triumphant advance, Huang Xiaojie, CEO of Storm Magic Mirror, needs to send two open letters in a row, saying that "2017 is destined to be a year of exponential outbreak of VR" and that "the evolution of VR has reached a critical point, and the era of VR popularization is coming."
Eagerly waiting, waiting for the VR/AR industry to break the circle and break out, which may be the inner monologue of many entrepreneurs in this industry at that time, including me, who was a co-founder and participated in the creation of the VR/AR vertical media platform Qingting Network.
Looking at the past on this public name, the day I wrote VR news can be on the headlines of science and technology, in order to say that this industry has exploded! Looking at the follow-up reports on the metaverse topic in the media today, there is a bit of a complex emotion of "finally waiting for this day".
Metacosmity, such a larger and more future-oriented trend concept, has also achieved a larger level of resonance, and naturally led to a group of new financing and new opportunities for startups in the VR/AR field.
The most famous investment case in the domestic AVR field this year is, of course, ByteDance's acquisition of PICO (the amount of online transmission reached 9 billion yuan).
I remember at the end of December 2020, at the "Fourth VR/AR Industry Innovator Summit" hosted by me, Zhou Hongwei, founder and CEO of Pico, said, "The market of VR products at the C-end has been rapidly entered from a stage of early adopters to the stage of early consumers, and it is expected that in the next two or three years it will enter a stage of mass consumers." ”
This year's shipments of VR equipment also confirm Zhou Hongwei's point of view. According to foreign media news, the shipment of the independent headset Oculus Quest 2 released by Facebook may have reached 10 million, which is also the key threshold for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to believe that the VR ecosystem has exploded.
Of course, Zuckerberg also predicted that the metaverse may become mainstream in the next 5 to 10 years, and the metaspace will inherit the mobile Internet, which also makes whether it can get the "ticket for the metacosm" become a hot topic.
Capital is ignited again. In terms of domestic A-shares, as of now, more than 70 listed companies have been included in the meta-universe concept stocks; the domestic internet red economic company "Tianxiaxiu" has soared by 5 billion yuan because of an open letter mentioning the meta-universe...
The VR/AR industry, which once fell out of favor in the capital market and mainly relied on self-hematopoiesis, and spent the trough period of 2017 and 18 years, was originally developing in a healthy direction. Suddenly, it was given another dose of strong medicine.
Of course, after the previous round of big waves of start-up companies, they must also have a stronger determination and long-term spirit.
As Zhu Jun, vice president of products and strategy at ByteDance, told the media: Optimistic about the future application of VR/AR technology in various fields such as office, training, video, entertainment, etc., but has always been cautious about particularly grand and very abstract concepts. Internally, teams are also required to avoid using such concepts and maintain a down-to-earth style to do specific work.
For me, too, I hope that in the future, from the perspective of an observer, I will be positioned in the middle of VR/AR vertical media and pan-technology media, and make long-term and sustained output to this industry, so that the changes that are taking place in the VR/AR industry can be better disseminated.
Now, the first topic I want to know and answer is today's headline, compared with the first year of VR in 2015, what is different about the industry today?
Welcome to your answers!