HTC Wants to Send Its Vive VR Headset to 100,000 Chinese Internet Cafes
To make virtual reality truly popular, you have to make cheap and accessible. And HTC is zeroing in on a huge market: Chinese internet cafes. It’s the latest example of tech companies worldwide trying to get VR in the hands of massive groups of users, quickly and cheaply.
At a VR conference in Beijing last Friday, Taiwan-based HTC announced plans to promote its Vive VR headset by partnering with Hangzhou Shunwang Technology, a Chinese internet cafe operator that could demo the headset to its 100 million customers for a small hourly rate.
The pilot program’s already underway in Hangzhou, Road to VR reports, charging players anywhere from $2 to $5 for 10 minutes of Vive time. Shunwang Technology provides software for over 100,000 Chinese internet cafes, totaling 70% of the market, which serves over 100 million people. (It’s still unclear how many of those cafes will actually be participating in the Vive program, though.)
Chinese internet cafes, infamous for being huge and filled with gamers for hours on end, have seen drops in numbers in recent years.
See the full story here: http://gizmodo.com/htc-wants-to-send-its-vive-vr-headset-to-100-000-chines-1749439260