Interview | Zhang Jingyi, Su Jianxun
Text | Su Jianxun
In the early September technology Internet circle, VR stole almost half the sound.
ByteDance's acquisition of Pico has stirred the slightly dormant VR market again; the market capitalization of Roblox, the "first stock in the metacosm", has rushed to $47 billion, surpassing the traditional game giant EA (Electronic Arts) that makes "Red Dead Redemption"; Evercore ISI Investment Company said that Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 will sell more than 8 million this year
Capital, content, shipments, and the elements needed for a healthy VR ecosystem are gradually completed, and the VR market begins to show new vitality.
On August 31, the domestic VR manufacturer iQIYI Intelligent released the flagship VR model "Adventure 3", the official price of 3499 yuan, for the first user, iQIYI Intelligent will also be worth 1700 yuan 30 boutique games free to open. Founded in 2016, "iQIYI Intelligence" is a technology enterprise incubated and independently operated by iQIYI.
In the context of THE RECOVERY OF VR, iQIYI Intelligent has high hopes for the release of "Adventure 3", and in an exclusive interview with 36Kr and other media, Xiong Wen, CEO of iQIYI Intelligence, said: "Adventure 3 is a very important milestone product. ”
iQIYI Intelligent Releases Flagship VR Model "Adventure 3"
From the perspective of the big strategy, iQIYI Intelligent divides the evolution of VR devices into three parts: version 1.0 (video), version 2.0 (video + game) and version 3.0 (video + game + social). The previous Adventure series, iQIYI Intelligent around 4K, VR content customization, etc., the core driver is "video", the launch of the "Adventure 3", its product features correspond to the rhythm of 2.0 video + game.
The transformation of the use of the scene is also reflected in the product characteristics of Adventure 3, in addition to the long-realized head 6DoF interaction mode, its internal structure adopts a "dual screen" scheme, that is, two eyes corresponding to two screens, the advantage of this scheme is higher resolution, single-eye effective pixels can reach 2160 * 2160, 43% higher than the single-screen scheme.
Although it serves the game scene, iQIYI Intelligent does not want the users of Adventure 3 to be just game players, and "breaking the circle" is another important goal of this product.
In the 30 games provided by iQIYI Intelligent for free, in addition to hard-core productions such as "Mercenary: Intelligent Crisis" and "Zombie Land: Bullet Without False Hair", it also includes "Dance Duel", "Dynamic Sound Brigade", "Rhythm Meng" and other suitable for trend leisure and parent-child puzzle games.
"From the game's free strategy and content selection, we are all taking into account the needs of Chinese users." Xiong Wen said that in order to promote to the C-end and subsidize consumers at the same time, iQIYI zhi currently uses real money and silver to enhance user education through the way of collecting game licenses (authorization).
30 games provided by iQIYI Smart for free
Although the amount of investment was not disclosed, a series of subsidy policies also showed that iQIYI Intelligent was optimistic about VR and the meta-universe ecology behind it.
When it comes to the cognition of the metaverse, Xiong Wen seems to be gushing. He cites a simple correspondence — if mobile phones and mobile Internet complement each other, then metaverses and VR devices are a natural pair.
However, the metaverse and the mobile Internet are fundamentally different, for example, the concept of "Killer App (Killer App)" that we often mention in the Internet industry may not be true in the metaverse world, because the metaverse provides a new scene, so what promotes the progress of the metaverse may not be a certain app, but a new application form that reshapes the time and space dimensions.
"Killer App is sometimes a breakthrough at the tactical level, but the metacosm is actually a breakthrough in the strategic side." Xiong Wen said.
The concept of "meta-universe" has also pushed up capital's perception of VR, Xiong Wen has continued to raise funds in the past few years, and half of the time he spends meeting with investors to discuss the imagination space of the business, "to discuss means to be doubtful"; and now, Xiong Wen's discussion with the capital has become "how fast this thing is, and who can win." ”
According to 36Kr, after ByteDance spent more than $1.5 billion to acquire Pico, Tencent has urgently retrieved the directory of enterprises in the domestic VR/AR industry internally, searching for company targets that are expected to accept capitalization.
"VR is a technology, and VR plus metacosm is a business. From the perspective of valuation, the logic is different from the valuation of a technology and the valuation of a technology with application scenarios. Xiong Wen said to 36 Kr.
Despite the bright future, VR is still an industry that needs to continue to be reinvested, and Facebook's $3 billion acquisition of Oculus seven years ago made it one of the best in VR today. Evercore ISI Investments estimates that facebook's virtual reality business will lose between $5.4 billion and $6.4 billion in 2021.
Xiong Wen is also mentally prepared, he and iQIYI CEO Gong Yu has an agreement: "This thing must stay up for at least 5 years, do not want to succeed quickly, if you want to succeed quickly, don't do this." ”
In an interview with 36Kr and other media, Xiong Wen, CEO of iQIYI Intelligence, conducted many discussions on the product characteristics of "Adventure 3", hardware research and development/marketing strategy, capital situation of the VR industry, and thinking about the "metacosm", which is worth reading.
<h3>The following is the transcript of an interview between 36Kr and other media and Xiong Wen, CEO of iQIYI Intelligence:</h3>
Media: What do you think of the concept of the "metacosm"?
Xiong Wen: In the past few months, there have been many discussions about the metaverse, and different people have different views, but in all the different understandings, there is still a basic consensus that the metacosm is the same magnitude as today's mobile Internet.
Corresponding to the hardware equipment of the metaverse, we believe that its form is VR, which can be seen as a generalized VR, including MR, VR and other forms, which can directly present 3D vision and highly immersive experience devices.
The concept of the metaverse is virtual, to experience it as a real world, the best is vr equipment, we can use mobile phones and other forms to do metaverse, but it is not appropriate.
In the past, everyone would ask: "When will VR give birth to killer applications", in fact, today when we look at the metaverse, we will jump out of this concept, Killer App is sometimes a breakthrough at the tactical level, but the metacosm is actually a breakthrough in the strategic side.
(Metaverse) may not ultimately be a single app to promote, but a new application scenario, it is a new concept from the dimensions of time and space, and VR will have a mutual achievement and promotion effect.
The metaverse has a lot of room for imagination, you can do what you want, plus social relationships, and more scenarios, if you add some economic systems, become a relationship that can be mapped to the real world, then this thing is particularly interesting.
So the metaverse and VR are a natural pair, and when this concept is proposed, the whole puzzle of VR is complete, and the next problem is how fast it develops, we have no doubt about its prospects, how big it can develop, which will be a particularly huge thing.
Media: What is the positioning of iQIYI Intelligence in the meta-universe world in the future?
Xiong Wen: Our strategy actually has several core points:
1. Adhere to the integration of soft and hard. We believe that hardware terminals and content ecology are integrated, end-to-end optimization state, so we will invest in hardware technology research and development, but also do hardware; second, we will definitely do content ecology, hardware equipment and content ecology will be an organic whole, which is the first core strategy.
2, the specific development of the strategy, we previously determined the version of the 1.0 version of the strategy called video drive, in the past few years we have been video as the core driver to promote the development of VR business, in the content to do customization, in the hardware of the world's first use of 4K screen to do VR, etc., is to do the video thing thoroughly;
From last year our strategy was upgraded to version 2.0, which is video + game. Yesterday, if you see our new product release, Adventure 3 can be said to be a product born for the game, so a lot of our work is to consolidate the game scene on hardware and content;
3, the next stage of the 3.0 version will be video + game + social, from our own strategy, will be step by step, but all the 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 upgrades, the foundation behind the soft and hard integration of the strategy, this is our whole idea.
Media: After Byte's acquisition of Pico, do you think the valuation logic of VR companies has changed so far?
Xiong Wen: It has indeed changed, just like I just talked about the relationship between VR and the metaverse, the puzzle of VR alone is incomplete, VR itself is just a technology, VR plus metaverse is a business. From the perspective of valuation, the logic is different from the valuation of a technology and the valuation of a technology with application scenarios.
Second, the participants in this industry, the upstream and downstream ecology will develop rapidly, and everyone can see the prospects inside; the third change, the differentiation of the industry will accelerate, the competition will be upgraded, the threshold will be higher, and the demand for resources will be higher, which will be more stressful for participants who are not prepared, relatively small in scale or not enough in strength.
Media: The valuation of "hardware + game + meta-universe" can now jump to such a high level?
Wen Xiong: I think this is reasonable, I have been doing financing for the past few years, if I meet with investors for 1-2 hours, I may spend half of my time discussing how much room is imaginary in the future of this business, which means that people have doubts about this issue.
If there is doubt about the future space, it will be directly reflected in the valuation, and investors will say that since many things in the future are not clear, the valuation must be too high, and they feel that this matter is unreasonable.
But today, in the process of contacting investors, I have basically rarely discussed with you how big this thing is in the future, and everyone has a consensus, and the discussion becomes how fast this thing will be and who can win.
Media: How will iQIYI Intelligence be integrated into the meta-universe system?
Xiong Wen: I believe that all VR companies will eventually become meta-universe companies, our vision is to be a meta-universe company, of course, everyone has their own focus, we will be more focused on entertainment, my own expression is "to meet everyone's real-life is difficult to achieve the dream."
Roblox should be the application that everyone has the most consensus on the "prototype of the metaverse" so far today, because it has some very basic concepts, like you mentioned that users can create, it is both a user and a content producer.
In fact, before the Roblox fire, we had already started some related work, this time we have several games that the team developed, and there is one called "Adventure Party", in which you can find roblox's shadow.
Media: Do you have any expectations for the sales of Adventure 3?
Xiong Wen: From the perspective of the past few years, the entire VR industry is basically a state of pure investment, and it is not profitable to do hardware or content. The only things that are likely to make money are some that do to B schemes.
Second, the industry scale of the entire market is not very large, if we compare with mainstream devices such as mobile phones and televisions, it is still something in a small circle, and it has not achieved a circle.
We have high expectations for Adventure 3 and hope that it will become a product that will be recognized by the general public, so that its scale will have a very explosive growth.
Media: What breakthroughs does iQIYI Intelligent have in VR technology now? What are the key points of attack?
Xiong Wen: Our investment focus will always be two: technology and content ecology.
In terms of technology, we focus on the direction of computer vision, the light-chasing handle is a computer vision technology, and then there will be more results in the interaction based on the computer vision program, such as gestures, bare hand interaction, MR and so on.
In terms of content ecology, we will continue to maintain investment. Just said that the game is free, for users is the need to break the circle, followed by the investment in the industry, why? Because we purchase game licenses in large quantities, this also represents the investment of game developers and ecosystems, and realizes the development of the ecology through subsidies.
Media: Around VR devices, what is iQIYI's strategy in sales and marketing?
Xiong Wen: Above the sales, we are very clearly positioned as to C companies, and some VR companies may do to B and C at the same time, but we have clearly positioned it as a product for end users and the consumer market.
Second, from the perspective of sales channels, we will pay more attention to online channels, whether it is e-commerce or live broadcasting. Offline channels will be considered gradually, but the focus should be on the online now, because the maximum user coverage can be achieved online, and the offline is relatively slow.
Third, in terms of promotion, our goal is to target the public users, not just focus on player-type users, iQIYI platform has good resources, including this launch we have special offers for iQIYI members, these users are what we want to focus on expanding.
Media: Do you think future iterations of VR hardware will accelerate?
Xiong Wen: I think content iteration will accelerate, and content iteration will be faster than hardware iteration.
From the developer's point of view, too frequent hardware upgrades may not be popular with developers. (VR application) chip Snapdragon XR2 has a certain life cycle, will not be as fast as the mobile phone iteration, for VR, more than two years of iteration cycle may be a more ideal state, hardware upgrade each step is a leap forward development, will not be squeezed toothpaste type.
But content iteration will be fast. We communicate with game developers and new ideas come out every day.
The core is three aspects, the first is interaction, the second is display, and the third is ergonomics. Of course, the display and ergonomics have a direct relationship, it will become lighter and smaller, the interaction will be richer, today we are six heads and six hands, and then we will have more interaction methods.
Xiong Wen: In five years, VR companies in the same period as iQIYI Intelligence have almost died, you talked about resilience, what is the reason for resilience?
Xiong Wen: Supporting it has something to do with mentality, we did this thing in 2016, and Gong Yu and I had an agreement at that time, I said that this thing should stay up for at least 5 years, don't think about quick success in this matter, if you want to succeed quickly, don't do this.
Expectations are sometimes important, but the hardest thing about people is that your expectations are particularly high and not met, and the feeling of disappointment and scratching your lungs is particularly strong. If you had expected that this would not be so fast, and you would have been prepared to suffer for five years, it would not have been so uncomfortable in the process.
There is a story that I think is very interesting, in 2016, there was a VR conference, the CEO sat one or two hundred, and then these people withdrew, many of them went to speculate on the blockchain. If you are also speculative and want to do this thing (VR) in a quick and successful way, you will definitely not survive, and you will not survive these 5 years.
Speaking of many people quitting, I think quitting is also a good thing for the industry, whether it is competitors or peers who stay today, I have great respect, because there are fewer impetuosity and noise in the industry, and more people who are willing to insist and invest.