VIRTUAL REALITY: The New Frontier of The Global “PORN MARKET”
Your eyes open to a beautiful woman, scantily clad in red lace lingerie. She bats her eyes flirtatiously, then slowly makes her way over to you.
But this is not a flesh-and-blood woman; it’s a three-dimensional performer in a 360-degree immersive video so convincing you can barely tell the difference. In virtual reality, as nowhere else, donning a pair of clunky goggles allows you to pursue your wildest sexual fantasies.
For virtual reality to become a viable business, pornography, which tends to rank among any new technology’s earliest and most eager adopters, will need to play a starring role, analysts say.
By 2025, such adult content is forecast to be a $1 billion business, the third-biggest virtual-reality sector, after videogames ($1.4 billion) and NFL-related content ($1.23 billion), according to estimates from Piper Jaffray. It’s the next “mega tech theme” in the U.S., akin to the mobile-phone industry 15 years ago, analyst Gene Munster said
“The relationship between adult film and virtual reality will likely be mutually beneficial for the top players — with pornography bolstering the sales and use of headsets, and subscriptions giving the porn industry a much-desired new revenue stream”, said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.
“It could revolutionize an industry that has been stagnant for many years,” he said.
The porn industry is betting new advances in the technology can convince more people to pay for the content, since sales of traditional adult video have been slowing. Revenue growth among adult and pornographic websites increased at an annualized rate of just 0.3% to $3.3 billion over the five years ending in 2015, as the business grapples with high piracy rates and the proliferation of free sites such as PornHub that offer homemade content with few ads, according to IBISWorld Market Research.
The investment in virtual-reality porn comes as the long-hyped technology is finally getting mainstream attention. Facebook’s FB+0.35% Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset goes on sale in the first quarter of 2016 after two years of beta testing. It will join Google Cardboard GOOGL+2.07% for Android phones and Samsung Electronics’ KR:005930–1.15% headset for the Galaxy Note 4, which both went on sale last year.
“Tech giants are in an arms race to put this technology is your living room,” said Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s virtual-reality testing center, Virtual Human Interaction Lab, speaking more broadly about the uses of virtual reality in entertainment at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.
Now that the technology has improved, content creators are exploring all kinds of alternate worlds and applications for the technology in sports and entertainment. In January, Samsung Electronics announced a partnership with the NBA to shoot behind-the-scenes and live-action footage that may one day bring the courtside-seat experience to the general population. Samsung has also tapped “Walking Dead” producer David Alpert to develop thrilling virtual-reality content through its Milk video streaming service. Earlier this year, Facebook launched Story Studio, led by a team of former Pixar executives, and began premiering cartoony shorts at film festivals in the U.S.
Mark Zuckerberg may not be touting virtual reality for use in a pornographic video, but adult filmmakers are preparing for the technology’s widespread adoption anyway.
The higher costs of producing the virtual-reality content, as opposed to the two-dimensional videos that can be produced by anyone with an iPhone, means subscriptions will likely play an early role — at least until there are more consumer-geared cameras capable of filming in a 360-degree format.
VirtualRealPorn, which has been producing virtual-reality adult films since January 2014, makes money by selling subscriptions: a 15-day trial for 5.95 euros, a month-to-month plan for €15.95, a three-month contract for €29.95 and a one-year contract for €89.95.
Porn-industry companies are hoping they can increase revenues dramatically if virtual-reality adult content catches on and stays behind a paywall due to the high barriers of entry, which result largely from filming challenges.
The initial filming struggles prompted VirtualRealPorn to build its custom cameras to shoot in 360-degree stereoscopic 3D. “There are many things to change in the shooting regarding the actor and actress positions, distances to the cameras, poses, etc.,” said VirtualRealPorn spokeswoman Linda Wells.
GoPro Inc. GPRO-9.17% became the first mainstream consumer technology company to try and bring virtual-reality production capabilities to everyone when it announced a cube-shaped mount in May that can hold six of its action cameras. The footage can be pieced together into 360-degree video segments using technology from Kolor, a virtual-reality production company GoPro bought at the end of April. But for what it’s worth, virtual-reality production remains in infant stages.
