China's online gaming weekly:Chinese game giants eyeing VR

While VR has been the buzzword in China’s gaming industry, leading gamedevelopers embrace the up-and-coming technology in their own way basedon their ambition, software and hardware expertise. Tencent is one of themost ambitious players among all with a multi-year plan to build a developercommunity based on its VR SDK and develop its own VR headsets. Baofengshares similar ambition in the space with already 1mn VR headsets shippedby Mar 2016. Netease and Perfect World focus on what they do best –developing VR-supported games. Kunlun and CMGE, on the other hand,invested in the VR hardware makers to break into the space.

According to China VR Industry Development Report announced in Mar,about 960k users purchased a VR device in 2015. 70%+ of them used the VRdevice on a daily basis. The daily average time spent is about 34min. Movies,travel, games, 360-degree videos and photos are among the top consumedcontent.

Tencent. Tencent targets to launch head-mounted display in 1H16 that canconnect to its first-generation gaming console miniStation and PC as an openplatform for developers. In 3Q16, Tencent targets to launch battery-poweredportable HMD along with joysticks. The consumer version will come out in2H16. Handset-based VR is scheduled to launch in 2017. We believe VRadoption for e-Sports is still in the early stage.

Baofeng. Baofeng announced that its VR headset shipments – already in the4th generation – surpassed 1mn units by Mar 2016. The company expects1mn units will be the hurdle for new entrants in 2016, which will soon rise to10mn units in 2017. Baofeng also set up funds dedicated to development ofVR content.

Netease. Netease announced its self-developed VR-supported Genesis ofDestiny at GDC in mid Mar. With 50+ game designers and engineers workingon the title for more than a year, this title is a real-time future-themedMMORPG and is set for a global launch.

Perfect World. Its US-based subsidiary rolled out the VR-supported versionof Subnautica along with Oculus Rift on Mar 28.

Kunlun. The company invested in VR technology and hardware makersANTVR and Nibiru in early Mar. ANTVR previously completed fund raising onKickstarter for its first VR headsets and has also partnered with Lenovo on VRintegration with handsets.

CMGE. The company announced to invest in the VR headset maker 3Glassesin late Mar.