The author | Sisyphus
Unfortunately, Zheng Jun's VR concert live broadcast on Pico could not come as scheduled due to the epidemic. But for Zheng Jun's fans and Pico users, it is definitely an experience worth looking forward to to experiencing Zheng Jun's scene through VR.
In August last year, ByteDance spent 9 billion yuan to acquire Pico, the leading VR hardware manufacturer in China (the specific amount was not confirmed), and subsequently, Pico was seen as another business with high growth expectations alongside Tik Tok in byte system.
After merging into ByteDance, Pico launched a "saturation" marketing attack on platforms such as Douyin, and repeatedly entered the live broadcast room of big anchors such as Luo Yonghao. In addition to the sales network of hundreds of offline dealers across the country, Pioc also opened the country's first direct flagship store in Changyaotian Street in Longhu, Beijing in February this year.
According to the news of the delay, Byte has drawn a number of competent cadres from the inside to go to Pico, including Ren Lifeng, the head of watermelon video, Song Binghua, the head of Douyin Variety, Wu Zuomin, and So on, and Pico also has sufficient HC in recruitment.
At the content level, Pico not only introduced celebrity concerts, but also opened up large-scale VR content procurement.
All indications are that ByteDance is still increasing its investment in the VR field and has high hopes for Pico. Byte is rapidly translating its "mighty miracle" success to vr.
But challenges remain. A senior investor in the VR field said that from the perspective of the iteration law of hardware equipment in the past, Pico's position may be the beginning of the next 50 years of hardware equipment. The entire VR/AR industry still has a long and arduous road to go, "this is not the Internet industry that Byte is familiar with, but a real technology industry." ”
01 Impact 1.8 million units!
Quickly pulling Pico's sales has become one of the clearest directions for Pico after Byte entered the ownership.
It is reported that the Pico team has raised the KPI for sales in 2022 from the original 1 million units to 1.8 million units.
Offline, Pico is on the verge of "killing crazy".
During this year's Qingming Festival holiday, Pico's direct flagship store in Beijing's Changyaotian Street in Longhu was almost crowded, and after half an hour of effort, 5 Pico Neo3s were sold successively.
Although there is only one direct-operated store, Pico has a total of 213 offline authorized stores in various provinces and cities across the country. In Beijing, there are 43 offline dealers including Eagle's Nest Digital, Dragonstar, Dream Room and so on.
At SKP's Eagle's Nest Digital Technology in Beijing, the store sales staff said that the neo3 currently promoted can sell dozens of units a month.
"We started working with Pico a few years ago to launch the Little Monster series, and Pico used to make money by selling equipment. After being acquired by Byte, it is obviously more likely to impact higher hardware sales, and the price is much discounted. The salesman said that the original 4099 yuan of 8G + 256G premium version Pico neo3 in the case of manufacturer discounts and shopping mall double discounts, directly reduced to 2699 yuan, but also gave away 788 yuan of game recharge card.
Byte's most direct "empowerment" of Pico is reflected in short videos and live streaming.
In major Internet communities, many Pico users have similar feedback - it is precisely because of the frequent "planting" of short videos that they finally placed an order for Pico.
In the past six months, Pico has been almost "everywhere", and the cooperation of Douyin alone includes the head masters of tens of millions of fans such as "Hippo Jun", "Uncle Wanning-", "Surfer Ah Yi", and there are also mid-waist masters like "Smile Ten Open", and KOLs including Sword Sister-in-law have also been released on the B station.
During the Spring Festival, Pico also surpassed Luo Yonghao in the official flagship store of Douyin, and repeatedly ranked first on the list of live streaming with goods.
According to Feigua's data, in the past 30 days, Pico's total sales were 67.85 million, sales were 25,000, and the average unit price was 2728 yuan. Among the accounts with goods, in addition to Pico's 5 matrix numbers on Douyin, there are all 66 other accounts such as Luo Yonghao, Qiao Mei 1118, and Mickey Walkers.
In mid-April, Pico announced that it had settled in the young trend consumer e-commerce platform, and at the same time, launched the 5th anniversary brand activity on e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, Xiaomi Youpin and Tmall, and participated in the pioneer version of Pico neo3 seconds with an original price of 2699 yuan, and the price could drop by 200 yuan.
"30 days free experience worry-free return", which is the current sales strategy of Pico, is intended to eliminate users' concerns to the greatest extent.
On Weibo, users participating in the Pico virtual idol Yuna Yuna's new costume co-creation contest: "Yuna's New Clothes" activity will have the opportunity to get a free Pico all-in-one machine.
In Douyin, searching for Pico will have a special theme page, and Douyin has also launched a Pico-related topic, and the number of video plays under this topic has exceeded 120 million as of press time; in addition, in the Xiaohongshu search for Pico, there are also theme pages similar to Douyin.
In the field of traditional content, Pico implanted The well-known variety shows of Zhejiang Satellite TV, "Ace to Ace" and "Praise for Songs Season 2". Jia Ling took the Pico headset to paint in VR on the stage, drawing the beautiful scenery of the West Lake in her mind, which triggered a lot of discussion.
Of course, Pico also invited many celebrity guests to create momentum for it. During the Spring Festival in 2022, actors Zhang Jin, Cai Shaofen, Yang Di, Olympic champion Yang Wei, etc. have promoted Pico on the Douyin platform with the topic of #Fancy VR Over the New Year, and the related videos have been played more than 110 million times.
Behind these promotions and sales, Pico gradually discovered a new product user group - fitness people.
The data shows that among the people who bought Pico, the male audience accounted for only 32.9%, and the female audience accounted for 67.91%. Many female users use Pico as a fitness device, not only immersed in it to play games, but also use it to burn fat and lose weight.
02 Pinning your hopes on content?
Since the merger into ByteDance for more than 8 months, another major change in Pico is the richness of the content ecology.
Since ByteDance previously owned long and short video platforms such as Douyin and Watermelon, it has accumulated certain resources in terms of video and music content copyright.
For example, before Zheng Jun announced the VR concert, Pico exclusively broadcast the VR concert of Lehua singer Wang Xi, and now clicks on the recommendation of the bulletin board on the left side of the Pico system hall, and can still see the replay of this concert. Subsequently, Pico and 88rising's well-known rapper singer knowknow did a virtual concert.
With the advantage of Douyin in terms of event copyright, Pico has also begun to get involved in the VR live broadcast of events. A few days ago, Pico and Douyin launched the "Bayern Munich vs Dortmund" football match on their own content platform, which is the first time that the Bundesliga has been broadcast live on the domestic VR platform.
In terms of VR game content, Pico's reserves are also increasing.
On the list of premium paid content, world-renowned VR games such as Ohshape, Undead Ranger: Deliverance, Red Matter, Viking War Drums, Angry Birds VR: Island of Pigs and so on are all on the list. And, after entering April this year, Pico maintains the rhythm of 1-2 new games every week.
According to the statistics of Chopped Pepper TMT, there are currently a total of 147 VR games on Pico, of which the largest number is puzzle games, with a total of 60 games, followed by 26 shooting games, followed by sports fitness and music rhythm games with 17 and 16 games respectively.
Even VR communities or virtual content platforms such as Veer, iQIYI VR, and Xi'an have also entered Pico. But if compared to the Oculus Quest2 owned by overseas Meta, this content is far from enough.
According to statistics, quest2 sales at the end of 2021 have exceeded 10 million units. Moreover, as of the end of February, the number of applications on the Oculus Rift platform was 1396; the number of applications on the Oculus Quest platform was 341.
Due to the huge investment in hardware research and development and content after the acquisition of Oculus, Meta's earnings report shows that the company's Meta Reality Labs division has a net loss of more than $20 billion for three consecutive years.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon
The Information reported that Meta is planning to buy a number of VR masterpieces for $1 billion, and has also cooperated with Disney, Lucas and other Hollywood giants to develop VR movies based on classic characters and IP, expanding its own Oculus resource library.
At the same time, two popular IPs, including Assassin's Creed and Cell Splinter, will become exclusive IPs for Oculus Quest and Rift S.
In order to benchmark Quest2, Pico not only needs to increase product sales, but also needs to build a sound content ecology. "Hardware and content need to evolve together, and if the hardware is laid too fast and the content can't keep up, Pico will become a falling product." Conversely, if the content is good enough, it will also drive hardware sales. A VR practitioner said.
The case of content driving sales once happened to Nintendo's Switch. In 2020, "Assemble! The global sales of Animal Friends have reached 13.41 million copies, surpassing the previous game "Come! The total sales of Animal Forest in 8 years also led to sales of Switch consoles. According to the reality of the earnings report, Switch sales increased by 200% in the fourth quarter of 2020.
In order to expand the content library, Pico has begun to purchase VR content from multiple parties.
VeeR VR has cooperated with Pico since 2018, when the cooperation method was relatively simple, Pico is equivalent to a hardware platform and an application store, and VeeR VR is the above application, and now in addition to the cooperation of its own application, it will also cooperate in multiple dimensions such as content authorization, joint production, and offline store linkage.
"Currently, Pico will also be involved earlier in the early stages of content creation. VeeR focuses on the production and distribution of high-quality VR content, especially the head IP adaptation of VR, which is still very compatible with their needs, and there will be more possibilities for joint industry benchmarking cases in the future. VeeR VR co-founder Jingshu Chen said.
Pinta Studios is an original animation company that also develops indie VR games. Recently, one of the company's puzzle VR games "Square Inch Magic Mirror" is also in Pico's negotiation cooperation.
The business terms of purchase price, resource matching and other aspects are still being discussed. The final purchase price is combined with the upfront cost of Pinta Studios and the proceeds after the exclusive offering.
For example, Pico may require a first release within half a year, which means that more copyright fees need to be paid. After all, if according to the original plan, Pico was only allowed to release for half a month or a month, or if "Square Inch Magic Mirror" was released simultaneously on 5 platforms such as Quest and Steam, the copyright fees that Pico needed to pay would be greatly reduced.
There is also a way to evaluate the license fee based on the sales of the game. Pinta Studios will estimate the sales of Square Inch Mirror on Pico, for example, the game sells for 70 yuan per copy on Pico, and it is estimated to sell 40,000 copies per month, and Pico evaluates the game licensing fee according to the monthly turnover of 2.8 million. If Pico decides that the number of monthly sales cannot reach 40,000, and only 25,000 at most, the two sides can negotiate again.
03Pico take your time and plan to develop for decades
According to IDC statistics, in 2021, Pico won the first place in China's VR market share with a market share of 41%, and became an important carrier for overseas content to enter China.
However, in the eyes of some industry insiders, Pico has not done enough, and the top priority should be to consolidate the product experience.
A senior VR entrepreneur said that if you must learn from Meta's strategy, it is not to set KPIs for Pico in the early stage, focus on improving hardware product strength, and invest more resources in infrastructure research and development. Product improvement, sales and content ecology is a matter of course.
"Vr content must be 3D, and 2D videos cannot be played to users in the headset. Otherwise, users can watch directly from the phone, TV and PC, why buy this headset? But many companies, including some big companies, have not yet reached a consensus on this simple issue. ”
The reason why the content in many VR devices is still 2D video, mainly because 2D video is easier to achieve 4K and 8K clarity, if you use 3D modeling, the same content becomes less clear, the experience is not good enough.
"However, even if the 2D video experience in the headset is good and clear, this is not the value brought by the headset." The above-mentioned VR entrepreneur said.
The biggest bottleneck in the infrastructure today is the rendering capability of 3D.
Under the current technical conditions, whether it is a mobile phone, a computer, or a VR all-in-one machine, it is difficult for the processor to load the entire VR content in a short period of time, and can only do distributed rendering.
Distributed rendering, on the other hand, has the problem of micro-latency. "In order to achieve high precision and no delay in user interaction, the current rendering technology is not yet up to par, and we can only wait for the progress of GPUs."
In addition, VR devices currently have difficulties that cannot be broken through optically, so that it is difficult for users to experience for a long time. The above-mentioned senior VR investors have said that even with the use of the latest optical technology Pancake, the next generation of products may weigh less than 300g, or 200g, but if you want to reach less than 100g, physical technology is difficult to break through, which is not a problem that can be accelerated by more people and more money, but also requires a little breakthrough in the underlying technology.
Given the many bottlenecks in infrastructure, Pico is also really constantly introducing new products. According to industry sources, Pico will release a high-end VR headset before September this year. The product bears a high resemblance to Meta's high-end product, Project Cambria, but was released earlier.
It is understood that Pico's upcoming new product will be the same as Project Cambria, with a thinner and lighter form factor, and will have higher resolution, eye tracking, face tracking and advanced controllers. The design of the ring handle is more conducive to the use of cameras to capture interactions.
The above-mentioned senior VR investors said that the development logic of Pico is different from ByteDance. "ByteDance belongs to an Internet company, emphasizing the input-output ratio, and after the investment, it can see immediate results in the short term, but building Pico actually belongs to the logic of technology companies, and it is necessary to make long-term and large investment in products and technologies in the early stage."
Although the improvement of the content ecology is important, the improvement of the underlying technology has more opportunities and more hope. For ByteDance, that's a long way to go. "We are still very optimistic about Pico, after all, only Byte has strength at present, and we are also willing to invest in this industry and drive the development of the entire industry." Several VR practitioners have expressed such hopes.
In fact, ByteDance is also ready to fight a protracted war. The shortcomings of Pico itself are obvious, but the problem is that the new generation of sound system is in the VR ecosystem, if ByteDance does not enter the game now, there may be no opportunity to redefine the expression system in the future.
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