After six months of preparation, the OSVR, which is called the "Android" system in the virtual reality industry, was fired.
On August 13, Razer announced that the distribution and operation of the OSVR (Open-Source Virtual Reality) developer platform in the Chinese market will be handled by the liaison of A-share listed companies, and a total of 75 million US dollars will be spent on affiliate interaction.
Who is the contact interaction? What does OS VR do, and can it really become a virtual reality Android?
Bought a big brother title
In February, during Razer’s C-round financing, liaison and interaction invested US$75 million. The two parties jointly announced that they will carry out strategic cooperation in the field of virtual reality and promote the development and operation of the OSVR open source platform.
Rashes 75 million U.S. dollars for a snake, which is like "paying for the title of a big brother."
Prior to this, Liaison Interactive has spent US$15 million to acquire Avegant, a VR helmet manufacturer, to deploy the virtual reality industry. However, the main business is still concentrated in the three major areas of mobile Internet, games, and smart hardware. Therefore, the use of Razer as a springboard to interact with each other There is an opportunity to move from the role of a virtual reality business participant to the maker of ecological standards. From this perspective, a new round of investment is more valuable.
Why? The original intention of OSVR is to become a standard unified platform, and then everyone uses this program.
As a virtual reality business standard platform jointly developed by Razer and its partners, OSVR publicly aims to serve as a connector for software, hardware, and other virtual reality devices. At this stage, developers are provided free of charge including SDKs, game engines, and Razer OSVR. Helmets and other development kits and a $5 million developer fund.
He Zhitao, the Chairman of Contact Interaction, said: “This open source platform is similar to the 'Android' in the VR field. It makes development easy, even if the students in the dormitory download the full set of OSVR code, they can also do development.â€
Free is just a charge
Free is a time-tested, but it's just a prepaid charge, or it's just a start.
Razer said that joining the developer program at this stage does not require payment, and it will provide developers with free development hardware, use the OSVR network platform that supports their supporters, support entrance priority, and support marketing.
However, officials have not stated that these services are free of charge. Once the platform is big, charges are only a matter of time and form. Google is an example.
In 2012, the Android operating system with 331 million users on the line for four years put up a “Knife†for partners and forced the suspension of the A800 for Acer’s Alibaba cloud operating system phones, so when OSVR had just taken a step We cannot determine its future direction, but we cannot rule out future contact interactions and Razer’s use of the advantages of the platform to charge third parties, and even raise the possibility that Google may compel Acer products to be abolished.
In addition to direct billing, the in-app SDK included in the official suite, and the platform division may be a way to disguise fees for the OSVR platform. This example is also Google and Android.
In January of this year, Oracle and Google’s lawsuits regarding the right to use Java, Android’s profitability and scale were all shunned. According to reports, Oracle’s lawyers presented documents in court that Andorid’s profit sources were divided into advertising and sharing. Revenue was 31 billion U.S. dollars and profit was 22 billion U.S. dollars.
Why do you want to do this? Don't make money
The contact interaction and Razer’s push for standardization is due to the fact that virtual reality cannot be earned at this stage. However, this is not the opposite of the Android that the two sides have teamed up to make OSVR into a virtual reality version.
Not earning money specifically refers to not earning money in the consumer market, while OSVR business is mainly aimed at enterprise-level users.
At the virtual reality investment and financing conference held at the end of July this year, He Zhitao, chairman of the contact interaction, introduced the dilemma faced by VR equipment sales in the consumer market in his keynote speech.
"The affiliate sells a lot of smart hardware. In our various intelligent hardware devices, the worst selling is the VR hardware equipment." It even said that even the domestic online did not dare to sell. "VR is really a fire, people are I know, but most people stop at the price, 100 people enter the shop, and less than 3 people will buy it.â€
If only the VR vendor Avegant is acquired, the liaison is still only a participant's role. It needs to endure and survive the long process of the consumer market gradually deepening VR awareness, and has the opportunity to enjoy the next bonus, but choose to create OSVR. Standard platform, as long as there are developers involved, there are peripheral manufacturers willing to follow up, the proceeds will no longer be a simple profit, but a future.
The non-earnings of the consumer market may also be a factor that pushes liaison and interaction to try to advance the OSVR platform business. Especially considering the identity of its A-share listed company, the platform’s property is not an order of magnitude higher than the mere product sales. In this regard, LeTV, which is based on ecological storytelling and has been decapitated as a demon stock, is also a typical example.
So, who said that liaison and Razer must earn consumers' money?
You are missing a big tree
There is no clear standard for doing ecology, but there are many flaws in the current OSVR.
First of all, there is a lack of star-level vendors, solutions, and products in this system of liaison and interaction with Razer. Although the official announced that there are already 350 partners, the core VR vendors are not within the established lineup, or most of them. It is all at the same time that multiple ecosystems are involved. More importantly, these companies are also trying to build their own ecosystem.
HTC, one of the three largest VR vendors, joined forces with Steam as a platform from the very beginning, and technologies are shared with each other. At present, both companies have also announced interfaces to peripheral manufacturers to open positioning system calls to enrich their own ecosystems. The Vive X incubator developer supports the project and also draws together a group of venture capital funds to create a virtual reality investment alliance.
In addition, Hypereal, the rookie of domestic PC-level VR vendors, has just unveiled its own positioning system open source plan, trying to build a PC-level VR ecology independent of HTC, Oculus and Sony, and in the one-machine market, recently released the second On behalf of the product IdeaLens also announced the corresponding eco-cycle plan.
OSVR has just started and there aren’t too many star-level vendors to participate in, but it has to face large and small opponents.
On the developer side, although OSVR will bring convenience to developers in terms of technology, time, and other costs, this is just a differentiated feature that has a virtual reality ecosystem and is not a core element that attracts developers. The core appeal for platform development is profit. When there is no big brand and no mass users, the developer’s enthusiasm will not last long, or there will be no interest at all.
Why do you say that? The answer can refer to Microsoft's Windows Phone project.