Disclaimer: The press release is not the official draft of Yingwei, and legal issues have nothing to do with Yingwei
Foreword: Compared with the video game city loved by the post-80s and post-90s, the offline VR experience hall may be becoming the "main force" of the game entertainment center after the 00s and 10s.
"I want to play this!"
Seeing the VR experience hall decorated in the corner of the mall full of futuristic sci-fi, many children were attracted and excited to stop and watch.
"It looks so fun!"
Some consumers inadvertently swiped the experience videos of some bloggers and came to the Internet celebrity VR experience hall to punch in.
As long as you wear VR glasses, with egg chairs or other auxiliary somatosensory devices, you can have an immersive virtual game experience that is completely different from mobile games and online games. This is exciting enough and trendy enough for the current young generation.
The wind of the "meta-universe" has blown to the side of ordinary people, more and more shopping malls have begun to lay out VR experience areas, and every weekend and holiday, the popular game area of VR experience halls will always be lined up. Unconsciously, VR has become a new way of life and entertainment.
01
Survive the winter,
The offline VR experience hall is back in the air
The offline VR experience hall originated from the VR industry boom in 2015. There are many today's VR masters and veteran players who are the first "meta-universe" journey of their lives that began at the offline VR experience hall.
However, at that time, subject to the development of VR technology, network technology and VR content, the entire VR offline experience industry was not as predicted by some industry insiders at that time, and the development was as common as Internet cafes and game halls.
According to the data provided by the "White Paper on the Status Quo of Vr Experience Stores in China" of the China VR Experience Store Alliance, as of November 2016, more than 3,000 VR experience stores were opened nationwide, but less than 30% of them were profitable. With the silence of the entire VR industry, VR offline experience stores have also become tepid.
It was not until 2018, when a virtual reality science fiction movie "Ready Player One" was released, that the VR offline experience store showed a state of recovery.
According to data, the domestic offline VR experience hall market size reached 1.04 billion yuan in 2017, and since 2018, it has maintained a steady growth trend of more than 30%, breaking through 4 billion yuan in 2020.
With the "meta-universe" concept fire, for many post-00s and post-10s, offline VR experience halls are beginning to replace traditional playgrounds and video game cities, becoming the central "main force" of these new human game entertainment.
Market analysis agency Greenlight Insights has released a survey report on the offline VR market, predicting that the number of offline VR experience halls worldwide will grow to more than 24,500 in 2023.
Offline VR experience halls seem to have survived the cold winter and will usher in explosive growth in the next 1-2 years.
02
About 100 yuan to experience a "meta-universe",
Consumers enjoy it
According to the scale, the VR experience halls that consumers can now access can be roughly divided into three types: Nakajima, large-space integrated experience stores, and large-scale VR entertainment theme parks.
Nakajima, which has only 2-3 small VR experience devices, and VR integrated experience stores that bring together a variety of game types, are more common. The large-scale VR entertainment theme park has not yet fully landed in China, but some projects are being promoted in Nanjing, Changsha and other places.
In terms of price, Nakajima and VR integrated experience stores also offer consumers two different options.
Nakajima's egg chair or roller coaster and other small VR game equipment, the experience of 10 minutes to 15 minutes, only 40 yuan to 60 yuan. The large-scale space comprehensive experience store, depending on the game project, will charge 150 yuan to 200 yuan for a period of 10 minutes to 30 minutes.
You don't need to buy thousands of VR devices yourself, you only need to spend about 100 yuan to swim in the "meta-universe" virtual world, which is still worth it for most consumers.
And what is the operation status of the offline VR experience store?
In the process of talking with the clerk, we learned that the current flow of people in the store is still quite large, there can be 60-70 people on weekends, and many of them are still repeat customers.
An industry-related investor also said that the demand for VR has also been increasing in the past two years. The potential of the "metacosm" in the consumer market is enormous.
03
Layout of B-end, C-end dual track,
Dapeng VR seized the opportunity
So, which hardware manufacturers have supported such a vigorous format as offline VR experience stores?
When visiting the offline VR experience hall, the brand of Dapeng VR frequently appears in our field of vision. Especially for VR game devices such as egg chairs and roller coasters, the helmet adaptation rate of Dapeng VR far exceeds that of other brands.
Dapeng VR, a VR brand of Lexiang Technology Co., Ltd., was established in April 2015 as a VR technology company integrating software and hardware. Its product lines are distributed on the B-side and C-end, of which the P-series VR all-in-one machine is mainly facing the B-end market, and the E-series PC-VR is facing C-end consumers, which can fully cover all kinds of consumer-level scenarios including theaters, games, and social networks.
According to data from international research agency Counterpoint, Dapeng VR ranked top 5 in the world in terms of overseas shipments in Q4 of 2020. The business map has been extended to more than 40 countries and regions. Among them, in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and other countries, the business of Dapeng VR accounts for up to 30%.
In November 2021, Dapeng VR received the latest round of tens of millions of dollars in financing. Dapeng VR said that the company will work on the infrastructure construction of the meta-universe and create more efficient interactive content and forms in it.
The cooperation with offline experience stores is actually an important part of the expansion of B-end business. Data show that as early as 2017, the E3 headset of Dapeng VR has fully completed the adaptation with mainstream VR somatosensory devices, such as egg chair systems, and jointly sold. Several large DOMESTIC VR entertainment manufacturers, such as Luck VR, Phantom Starry Sky, etc., have also established long-term cooperation with Dapeng VR. Under the joint operation of the brand, the share of such devices in the offline VR experience store of Dapeng VR has reached 80%.
Chen Chaoyang, CEO of Dapeng VR, once said in an interview with the media: "In recent years, Dapeng has always been a situation of C-end and B-end doubles. "However, unlike the product spelling parameters of the C-end, the products facing the B-end must provide customers with the highest cost performance as much as possible while providing the same performance."
On the road of popularization of the "meta-universe" consumption scene, Dapeng VR may have found a suitable development path for itself.
04
epilogue
After many visits and surveys, we found that although the joint layout of VR hardware manufacturers and VR content manufacturers has made today's offline VR experience industry thriving, there are still many deficiencies, such as inconsistent charging standards, relatively single game experience, and so on.
However, many practitioners of offline VR experience stores are invariably optimistic about the industry: VR experience halls are the fastest and most direct way for many consumers to enter the "meta-universe" world, and there will be an outbreak period in the near future.
With technological innovation and industrial upgrading, how can offline VR experience stores go further? We will continue to pay attention.