Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the one hand, the malaise of the smartphone market and the boost of meta-cosmic heat wave on the other, it has become a "retreat" for giants to compete for VR / AR cake in 2022.

Especially after Meta tried to seize the first opportunity by renaming, all kinds of players were obviously anxious, Sony and other established players continued to make efforts, while byte, Tencent and other new players poured in one after another, and their ambitions were clear.

Clearly, giants without stories are trying to reshape the logic of growth through this new track. According to Counterpoint, shipments from XR will increase about tenfold from 2021 to 2025.

But the forecast is only a prediction after all, in the face of the immature market, no one can give a definite answer at present. In other words, Meta and its challengers are doing their best to take part in a big gamble on whether the VR / AR tuyere will actually come.

Who is hunting Meta from the so-called first year of VR in 2016 to the second spring driven by the meta-universe boom, the logic of the VR industry has changed significantly.

At that time, almost all VR equipment manufacturers emphasized the hardware itself. at present, players are following Meta's way of thinking, which seems to indicate that hardware + content play is the mainstream way of VR / AR industry.

There are only three types of players targeting Meta: Internet giants with a place in the field of interactive entertainment, hardware manufacturers with hardware and supply chain advantages, and omnipotent players with both content and hardware capabilities.

Among them, the pure software route is the least likeable. after all, VR / AR is generally regarded as a "ticket" in the post-smartphone market era. Without hardware entry, the imagination space will be greatly reduced, and it may also be "kidnapped" by hardware manufacturers.

It can be seen that both byte and Tencent, the giants who covet the market, are almost all making up their own hardware capabilities. In June this year, it was revealed that Tencent had officially established a XR department, and earlier, it had been reported that Tencent had acquired black shark technology. Byte, on the other hand, acquired VR manufacturer Pico early last year and incorporated it into XR's business line, releasing a new wearable device a few days ago.

However, the hardware ability is only the ticket to the finals, not the way to win. At present, no device can cover both mild and heavy users, stacking hardware can enhance the experience, but it will also drive up costs, contrary to the overall consumption level of the market, and ultimately can only catch a very small number of enthusiastic players.

In the face of the immature market, the primary goal of each player is to catch the light users with a larger base. For light users, due to the lack of rigid demand attribute of VR / AR, price will be the biggest threshold. Once the fresh cost is too high, the willingness to buy will be greatly reduced. In other words, the only way in front of the relevant manufacturers is the ratio of performance to price.

Oculus Quest 2, which establishes the dominant position of Meta, is the product of the line of performance-to-price ratio. Even if it has been published for two years, it is difficult to surpass the market. Not long ago, sales of the VR device Oculus Quest 2 reached 10 million, according to its chip supplier Qualcomm.

The master opened the way, and the disciples followed. Take byte as an example, a year after the high-profile acquisition of VR hardware manufacturer PICO, PICO 4, which has the power of World War I in terms of specifications and performance-to-price ratio, tried to replicate the logic of Meta. The track logic switching will undoubtedly impact the status of traditional hardware manufacturers.

Prior to this, due to the differences in previous business, hardware manufacturers often have certain advantages in product design, supply chain relationship and so on, which naturally can effectively reduce costs. But this scale advantage is only for the "second-rate opponent". Once the opponent becomes a giant, the advantage will turn into a disadvantage.

The logic behind it is that hardware manufacturers have a relatively single income structure, lack of content ecological support, and are extremely dependent on the negligible profits brought about by selling hardware, that is to say, no matter how they reduce costs by virtue of the advantage of scale, there will eventually be a profit life-and-death line.

Internet players, on the other hand, can make the price of the equipment lower than the cost if necessary, and then rely on the software ecology to make a profit, killing the hardware manufacturers. This is more common in the battlefield of game consoles in the past, and the expensive games in Quest2 are also the embodiment of the way to play.

From the point of view of the layout and movements of each player, the playing method of hardware profit and content payment may become the main theme of the VR / AR track. In this context, whoever has the most market traction in content ecology will be able to take the initiative in this campaign.

The content of the giant decisive battle has been the heart of the VR industry since VR fell from the tuyere for the first time. Take the VR product launched by a mobile phone manufacturer as an example, not to mention the impact of obsolete hardware on the experience, its weak content ecology can not support users' pan-entertainment needs at all, and can only be reduced to instrumental viewing equipment.

And even now, Meta, as a benchmark manufacturer, is also facing a test at the content level. Take its exclusive content as an example, almost all of them are obscure works such as "Wands Alliances" and "Liteboxer VR", while the more famous "biochemical Evil 4 VR" is actually a work released in 2004, and its market appeal is limited.

Even though Meta is in the forefront at this stage, the content ecology has not established an insurmountable advantage. In other words, challengers have every chance to achieve anti-surpassing through content.

As the current installed capacity in the market is not high, content producers blindly throw resources at VR / AR, which is likely to fall into a situation that is not profitable. Take the 3A games eagerly awaited by the consumer market as an example, the development cost is often tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, even if you log on to all VR platforms, you may not be able to recover the cost, let alone landing on a single platform as exclusive content.

As you can see, in addition to "half Life: Alyx", the works that have been able to support the content quality of VR in recent years are either the product of transplants of other platforms such as "biochemical Evil 7 VR" and "biochemical Evil 8 VR", or works such as "the call of the Horizon VR Mountain" that can reduce costs by reusing existing resources. In this regard, Sony, one of the "imperial three", will have a certain advantage.

Compared with Sony, which relies on high-quality games to reach heavy users, byte seems to be on a very different path. From the perspective of the content scenario bound by PICO4, there is a lack of hard-core applications and is obviously biased towards mild users. As mentioned earlier, the method of targeting mild users at this stage is more pragmatic, but the construction of mild content is relatively easy, it is difficult to form a moat, how to ensure the competitiveness of the content level will become the key.

In this respect, PICO, which is backed by bytes, seems to deliberately avoid the serious game scenes in the volume and make efforts towards the video content ecology. It is reported that PICO is intensively establishing partnerships with content production companies and streaming media platforms, and is trying to fill itself with UGC content through the Creator incentive Program.

Obviously, the slightly weaker bytes in the game world want to open up the path between user creation and content consumption, thereby raising their own content ecological barriers, but for creators, producing VR content at this stage means more complex workflows and a smaller audience, which is likely to be thankless. Based on this, it will be difficult for bytes to migrate the original content ecology to VR scenarios in a short period of time.

Similar to bytes, the trend of Tencent's XR business seems to be in line with its own fundamentals. It is reported that the general person in charge of Tencent's XR business is Ma Xiaoyi, and Shen Li is in charge of the specific business. Both of them are veritable veterans of the game industry. It is worth mentioning that Tencent and Logitech recently jointly launched a cloud game handset.

The so-called cloud game, that is, the game is run on the cloud, and the service provider compresses the rendered game screen and transmits it to the user through the network, and the user only needs to access the network and display equipment.

Cloud gaming capability is a major exit to balance the portability and performance of VR devices at this stage. Xiaomi Cloud Game Director said at a forum last year that Xiaomi will have a comprehensive layout in cloud games, AR / VR and meta-universe. But cloud games are not a panacea. Google, the big brother in the industry, has used Stadia to teach the industry a lesson-even if there are cloud games, upstream content capabilities are still indispensable.

In addition to games, social interaction is also a very important hand of Tencent. However, limited by the level of technology, the so-called XR social network has always lacked a way to provide a sense of belonging to the social circle layer, simply unable to convince users to indulge in it.

Recently, documents released from inside Meta show that its meta-cosmic social platform Horizon Worlds has been rejected by employees even internally because of its poor quality. It is worth mentioning that Horizon Worlds, as a virtual community, is the main position of Meta meta-cosmic social matrix. In other words, Meta, who holds the same social card, seems to have tried and made mistakes for Tencent-purely social, can not support the immature XR scene. More "small and sophisticated" attempts may be needed to find a viable path.

In the final analysis, whether Sony, Tencent, or Meta, byte, all try to graft their own long board onto the content ecology, and the way they play is not the same. For now, however, establishing the advantage of scale will be a clear path-only by expanding the size of its own users can it attract more content developers and creators, and then improve the content ecology and attract more users. And byte some time ago will spare no effort to push PICO4, is likely to go to the user.

Waiting for Apple's answer, there is no denying that some players have been given the cake on the current XR track. However, according to the aforementioned Counterpoint forecast, the share of players at this stage is only icebergs on the water surface, and there may be a huge market that needs to be developed under the water surface.

The logic behind it is simple: if you think of XR devices as the next smartphone, you will end up in millions of households; if you regard XR devices as the next generation of mainstream interactive entertainment devices, it is possible to replace home game consoles. Judging from the existing route, XR manufacturers seem to be more willing to "do both", so as to become a disrupter in the consumer electronics field.

In addition, XR devices have many stories to tell in the B-end market. Take the in-car scene as an example, both Tesla and Audi are trying to enrich in-car entertainment through XR devices, and even put AR applications into the windshield to create a more intelligent driving experience for users. And any of the aforementioned paths can go through, and then comes the almost endless demand.

Although the stories are tempting, no matter how players pour in with hot money and how companies in the supply chain rub their hands, the popularity of XR devices will eventually have to face the consumer market-only if you can sell it can it become a real trend, and if you can't sell it will be a self-revelation.

From the current trend of players, the situation does not seem to be optimistic. Recently, Guo Mingyi revealed that Meta may postpone all AR / VR projects after 2024 and cut shipments by 25-35% this year. As soon as the news came out, the market value of Gore shares lost 10 billion yuan. It can be seen that even Meta, which is at the forefront, is facing great uncertainty, not to mention the challengers of Meta.

The logic behind it is that no matter how much players practice content ecology, the XR track still lacks a killer app with immediate results, or killer play and interaction-without rigid requirements, it can only serve users' desire to "taste fresh" forever.

According to the aforementioned logic, there is no doubt that Apple is a BOSS player on the XR track. Not only does it have advantages in hardware areas such as mobile processors, but its software ecology also gives more possibilities to XR devices. In addition, Apple has been making up for content capabilities such as games and streaming media. For now, Apple, which has software, hardware and content ecology, is undoubtedly the most comprehensive player in the XR field.

Based on this, in addition to Meta, byte, Sony and other minorities, although the vast majority of players are frantically launching a variety of layouts, but the product level has always maintained a wait-and-see. It is not difficult to guess that all players may be waiting for Apple to give the answer paper, after all, not all players have sufficient cash flow, a set of mature model, will greatly save the cost of trial and error.

In other words, this stage may only be the preliminary stage of the XR circuit, and the real contest may not begin until Apple officially enters the war.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: photon Planet (ID:TMTweb), written by Dihao Wen, edited by Wu Xianzhi

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