Voxelus Update March 2017 — GDC Visit
Hi Guys,
I thought about writing a more casual CEO blogpost about my recent trip to GDC 2017 in San Francisco to share some thoughts on VR in general and also give you an update on what we are doing here at Voxelus.
Lets start with GDC. First let me tell you that I’ve been coming to this conference for a while now, actually 2017 marked my 10th GDC! I’ve seen a lot of things at this event over the years. I consider GDC to be a place where you get to see behind the scenes on the things that are coming, specially on interactive entertainment (not just games anymore) lets remember that video games are the #1 driver for new entertainment technologies.
Since 2015 the star of the show is VR. This is the third year that I’ve seen more VR companies showing hardware and software than anything else that is non VR. It looks like VR is here to stay, of course is a hyped industry and the truth is that VR growth is slower than anticipated but it’s growing and A LOT of companies are investing millions and millions of dollars. Eventually it will happen. I certainly believe and hope so.
I had the opportunity to meet with several CEOs of VR companies and with all the major device manufacturers and everyone agrees on one thing. VR will get mass adoption but it will take time, at least a few more years. We are still in the early days.
My personal view regarding this topic is that being early is good and bad. Good because there is a lot of opportunity to create stuff and to pivot things that don’t work. Bad because there are no users, we are talking about a few million of users TOTAL with all platforms combined. That’s nothing in terms of global markets and to have so VR companies having sustainable businesses. Also VR Start Ups need a longer runway, basically this mean they need to keep burning money and not making any money for a long time.
One thing I saw is VR companies pivoting from product to services or (like us) finding new creative ways to add new business model to their overall strategy. This mean leveraging know how and technology doing services for other companies and bringing them to VR. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. Read this to know what Voxelus is doing regarding services: http://vrjournal.com/voxelus-produce-virtual-reality-projects/
I’ve also spent quite some time with Google Pixl and Google Daydream. I’ve found this platform to be the one that has the most chance of becoming the truly first mass adopted VR platform. The HMD is light, the wireless controller works extremely well and developing/publishing for the platform is as easy as doing it for Android in the Google Play Store. The moment that google allow more than a few phones to support Daydream VR is going to explode! Right now there just a few phones that are supported on Google Daydream, you can see the list here: https://vr.google.com/daydream/phones/
The truth is that any powerful Android phone could support Daydream. Google please open the floodgates! we need users. I definitely see this happening soon tho. Heck, even the iPhone could use Daydream…
So what are we doing here at Voxelus these days?. On one end we are porting Voxelus to Google Daydream, the first version is scheduled to be on the Google Daydream Store on Q2 2017, we are having fun with the new controller and we just don’t want to port it “as is” we want to take advantage of the new motion features and integrate those into the product creating a new way to control Voxelus. Web page updates and overall changes in our site.
Wrapping up work on collectibles mechanic. Expect an announcement very soon on this, we are really excited about the possibility that this feature enables.
Working with other companies, brands and agencies on the Studios front, a lot of cool stuff, we are close of seeing VR products in the market that are “Powered by Voxelus” but are not our products :)
We are also working on the Voxelus to Equity conversion that was announced back in Nov 2016. Read it here if you missed it: https://medium.com/@mrepetto/voxelus-offers-voxels-to-equity-conversion-dfc80047475d#.9q6sp3w0q
This is taking more time than anticipated and it makes sense, it’s innovative and the lawyers and making sure all things are in order. I believe that we will be able to announce the program pretty soon. We know a lot of people are interested in this. Please be patient, it’s coming and it will happen as soon as the legal work is done.
A lot of interesting stuff will happen here at Voxelus during 2017 and hopefully in VR in General!
Cheers!
Martin Repetto — Voxelus CEO
