HTC Viveport: ‘We’re Looking For Our Game of Thrones’
“For Viveport, if we compare last quarter versus last quarter a year ago, our revenue growth, and our transaction growth is over 4X [greater], and so we've grown quite dramatically, and the main driver behind this growth is primarily subscription,” Steiber said. “Over 70% of the transactions are actually related to subscriptions, meaning people getting premium titles through subscriptions, rather than paying download.”
“It's very easy for you to have five $20 titles, and have $100 of value and only paying $8.99 [per month],” he said.
Viveport has about 1500 titles on the platform but the subscription itself includes around 500.
HTC Vive has always supported a more open platform than Oculus. Vive Studios’ boxing game Knockout League for example has appeared on both PSVR and Oculus, and following that same mentality, Viveport was recently opened up to Oculus users who may desire a subscription option as well. Steiber believes that this effectively doubles the addressable audience since Rift and Vive installed bases are “neck-and-neck,” he said.
The VR arcade scene initially saw more traction in Asia, but it’s picking up more steam here in the west lately. In fact, Bandai Namco just announced that it will bring its VR Portal experiences to Union Station in Washington DC,...
Not only does the arcade experience familiarize people with the Vive technology and brand, but any developers that get their games featured in an arcade station are likely to get a brand boost as well.
The home market is not setting any sales records, but Steiber refuted the idea that VR’s in trouble. In July, the Vive team posted a blog entry about the “so-called death” of VR, pointing fingers at analyst forecasts while boasting that, “Vive has paced at its highest sales velocity of all time, for weeks on end, and we sold out. For a consumer electronic product in its third calendar year, this continued trajectory is nearly unheard of.”
The Vive Pro, in particular, feels expensive at $799 without any controllers or base stations included.
“We do think that AR is very important,” Steiber affirmed. “And the way we view our future vision around Vive Reality, we think that you have this virtual reality continuum,...
But I do think that for us in our future, we're not announcing anything, but we do think that AR will be an important part of our Vive reality experience.”
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