VR offline experience stores that imitate the Internet cafe model can really leverage the C-end market

At the end of the last century, personal computers had basically taken shape but had not yet been popularized in households, and the Internet had just emerged. Against this background, a new service format - Internet cafes began to sprout and expand rapidly around the world. In the domestic market, Internet cafes sprang up like mushrooms after rain, spreading across towns and even villages almost overnight, not only cultivating the first batch of large-scale Internet users, but also allowing the earliest "speculators" who entered this industry to make a lot of money.

More than 20 years later, a similar process seems to be repeating itself in the VR field, which is considered to be the "next generation computing platform."

Two-way penetration VR experience stores are expanding rapidly

It is no exaggeration to say that VR is one of the hottest technology topics now. However, for most consumers, the concept of VR is still not clear enough, and the emergence of offline experience stores provides this group of people with the most direct and perhaps the cheapest opportunity to understand VR.

VR experience equipment has begun to appear in many shopping malls in first- and second-tier cities, either in a corner of an amusement park or in a store. With the "future world", "deep immersion" and other very tempting advertisements, it has attracted a lot of attention. Especially during holidays, customers can often be seen queuing up to experience it. It can be seen that this model has gradually penetrated into the front-line consumer market.

On the other hand, from the identity of the layout of VR offline experience stores, it can be found that the capital market is also "very interested" in this model.

The Void was one of the first participants to propose and practice the VR offline experience model. Its design plan was used as a reference by many subsequent VR experience centers. In February this year, Shanda Network announced its investment in The Void and will establish The Void Virtual Reality Park in China; Shunwang Technology, which has reached a strategic cooperation with HTC, announced that it has prepared 1 billion yuan to build VR experience stores in 50,000 Internet cafes across the country; at the beginning of the year, Leke VR, which provides overall solutions for virtual reality experience centers, completed a tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing. It is said that Leke VR has served nearly a thousand offline VR experience stores in China's first-tier cities and some second- and third-tier cities.

In addition, VR-related technology or content manufacturers have also begun to join the offline layout of VR experience stores, including Noitom, Nibiru and Xuetan VR. Some teams that previously engaged in offline entertainment, such as escape rooms and amusement parks, have also shown signs of transitioning to VR.

Aggregating multiple nodes of the VR industry, offline experience stores may be the most profitable C-end outlet at present

Just like the first small business owners who opened Internet cafes, the entry of many funds and teams into VR offline experience centers is not just to cultivate the early market. The clear business model makes VR experience centers the most profitable C-end outlet at present.

During the May Day holiday last year, there were reports that the highest daily revenue of a VR experience center in Guangzhou exceeded 20,000 yuan, and the weekly revenue exceeded 50,000 yuan. Good game providers can extract a certain commission from each experience, but currently online VR games have basically not formed a stable flow. From the perspective of short-term revenue, some VR game development teams have begun to turn to offline experience stores for targeted development. In addition to the GearVR and Oculus platforms, the domestic VR game developer Longteng World has begun planning to develop VR games for offline experience stores.

The same cooperation also occurs at multiple nodes of the VR industry chain, such as head-mounted displays, large input/output devices, and video content providers. One of the important reasons is that the current hardware cost of VR is too high. In order to achieve a better VR experience, a complete set of computing and display equipment costs more than 10,000 yuan. The prices of large peripherals such as egg chairs, dynamic seats, and treadmills range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and are basically not on the list of personal consumer goods. Even if the price factor is put aside, it is difficult to find a family that will set aside at least a few square meters of land specifically for the VR experience.

It can be said that offline experience stores have become the most active example of the B2B2C model in the VR industry. They are not only an effective channel for VR products to flow to consumers, but also a key entry point for C-end capital to flow back in the short term. However, it must be realized that the rapid growth of the VR offline experience market is partly due to the demographic dividend. If the user experience is poor or the richness of the later content fails to keep up, the possibility of secondary consumption will be greatly reduced.

Overall, the expansion speed of offline VR experience stores is faster than the speed of content update, and there may be a concentrated outbreak before the end of this year. As a result, the competition among them will become more obvious. Referring to the development history of Internet cafes, in the long run, the survival rate of brand chain model may be higher.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.