REUTERS
Although the development of VR hardware is not as enthusiastic as in the early years, the industry still has continuous investment. For example, Tencent established a new XR department with nearly 300 people in June last year. Put” concept machine.However Reuters It was learned that because the Chinese Internet giant believed that it had “failed to make a quick profit”, it proposed to the XR department to “find another opportunity”.
Regarding the VR market, sources said that Tencent believes that developing competitive products requires a lot of investment. At the same time, there are no killer games and applications. In addition, internal estimates will not be able to record profits until 2027. On the other hand, Tencent’s plan to acquire the e-sports mobile phone brand Black Shark was also reportedly cancelled. This large-scale merger and acquisition involving 1,000 employees is said to have attracted the attention of the Chinese government.
The VR market was the most lively about 7 years ago, when Tencent had already set foot in it; later in 2021, seeing the success of Meta Quest in engineering design and increasing market acceptance, interest was revived again. Only later, due to the epidemic and the strengthening of government supervision, sources pointed out that Tencent is also gradually weakening.
That is to say, Pico, a VR brand owned by Douyin’s parent company, also announced last month that it would lay off 200 people, which shows that the development of VR today is not easy. It depends on whether the launch of PlayStation’s PS VR 2 can make consumers interested in VR content again.
