It’s been a year since HTC introduced the world to room-scale virtual reality (VR) with the HTC Vive. Not surprisingly, the team at Vive wanted to comment upon the event.
The Vive blog post remarked upon the aims they have, saying that the team “Wake(s) up every day focused on how to make VR scalable and profitable for the community, and on building a new future of computing.”
The Vive team say they are interested in developing and building the VR ecosystem for the long haul, and notes that the push toward targeting creators and creative people with the Vive Maker community. The post also says: “We are aggressively making moves to cement the future of VR. Whether it is Vive X, Viveport, Vive Studios, VR for Impact or a half dozen other initiatives we’re driving for the industry, we’ve diversified faster in the VR market than anyone in the industry.”
30 new companies have recently joined the Vive X Accelerator Program, which gives them access to funding and technology to create new VR projects. The team say this is part of a vital process of ensuring content developers are successful.
The post states that VR is bigger and more important than just how well a single videogame sells. The posts re-affirms Vive’s commitment to openness for the platform: “We fully intend to keep Vive open to developers and to be the best VR platform to develop for. One of the key driving forces for Viveport is our ability to provide new revenue streams to developers, which is a big part of why we just launched a VR Subscription service. Whether it is direct game sales, revenue from Arcade, subscription models or getting your content on more devices, we will be there.”
Vive are of the opinion that Education with be a rich source of growth for VR in future: “Education will also continue to be an area of investment. This year we will also see longer-term research as to VR’s impact on education. We’ve seen early studies out of classrooms in China that show VR has an immediate and measurable impact on test results, but we expect this research to expand and help provide educators with a roadmap to introducing VR.”
The post ends with the Vive team thanking everyone who has supported them and saying they are looking forward to a second year of development with VR and Vive.
VRFocus will bring you further updates on the HTC Vive when they come in.