Episode 90 – The VR business and Life of a Startup
In this episode of Business Growth Time, we talked about The VR business and Life of a Startup
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Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:49 – Virtual Reality on business
Terry said that the three most important words in startup- just don’t die!
04:21 – Out of home entertainment world
- A couple of things are happening in the space at least from the actual gaming perspective
The biggest thing is there’s discussion about licensing content because game developers spend an inordinate amount of time building a game, which costs an inordinate amount of money and they want to make that money back somehow.
- If you want to go and buy a PlayStation game, you would throw down your $59 or $99 or whatever that amount is. But, it’s usually right and you would have the game and you play the game is what you want.
- You could have friends come over and they could play that game, too
- It’s not a big deal because you’re not really selling, not charging people to come play so it’s not a commercial play.
05:29 – VR in a commercial market
- In a commercial market where you’re actually selling it, you have to come up with a little different model because you can’t just pay one time and then let everybody else make money off of the thing you built. You can’t charge your customer if you’re game developer in charge of one. Then, have it you just keep making money. It’s almost like a movie, it cost a billion dollars to make a movie and they charge everybody a ticket price over and over
- So, what they are doing now is kind of this per minute charge. They are working with licensing for the software developers where we handle all of that for them, so we’re managing the amount of people who are paying the developer every time a game is played.
- It’s really cool from the developers perspective because they’re getting paid and they like it and we’ve got developers that are making two thousand dollars a month on games they’ve developed
- Every minute that gets played, these guys are getting maybe it’s six cents, maybe it’s twelve cents, maybe it’s twenty cents a minute depending on the game.
*It definitely makes sense because in the world that you’re talking about they’re going to have to update those games and more importantly it encourages them to make more new games, so they can take some of that money and reinvest it he digital world or the social media world
The digital world and the social media world
- In the digital world and the social media world, content is king so the biggest thing is getting more content developers out there and giving them ways to make money doing
….So that part has been really, really interesting, it’s carried us some good favor with the developers, but it’s also really good for our customers.
09:26 – The business concept of the VR world
- Obviously, the VR world people are talking about it, how it works, the business model of it and it’s different than what people who would have an idea
- The experience is inside and it’s what’s perfectly amazing. But understanding how it’s going to grow and continue and what’s going to happen and why you’re going to want to go back and check it out is a whole different conversation. So, the business aspect becomes important because without it there is no there is future of it, so, making sure that the licensing gets handled from a customer standpoint, from a developer standpoint becomes a really, really important piece.
- What’s going on in certain VR arcades is they’re basically unplugging the internet and you can run these games locally and not plugged into the internet, nobody can track how many minutes are being played, which means that you’re not paying the developers and if you’re not paying the developers, what happens to this level of content that gets created, it goes down.
- Ultimately, the hardware cost is either going to stay the same which ain’t going to last very long or it’s going to go down like a TV like, a phone etc.
- It doesn’t really matter, it’s the experience inside of hardware that becomes really, really important and that’s the piece that’s got to change, you know, the way that is the piece that drives people in.
12:19 -VR BUSINESS: LAN Party in VR
The gamers go out to certain areas where there’s a bunch of monitors and a bunch of computers and everything kind of hooked up in just go hang out in spend time almost in an old-school arcade but without consoles, it’s all computer-generated or it’s all Xbox generated or it’s all PS PlayStation generated and so they’ll put to 30 to 40 of these different devices in one space and charge a per person fee. There are currently 450 Virtual Reality Arcades, Terry predicts there will be 10 times that in the following year.
13:32 – eSports
- They have teams where people compete in shooting games or fighting games or whatever kind of video game they play and they have competitions and you can go and join this competition and twenty thousand people show up in an arena to watch these ten people compete in this video game and they can win three million dollars.
18:45 – Different things that you could do in virtual reality
- We could do different things, medical, or travel and with the cruise line
- We looked at real estate for a little while and all of those are really awesome applications for virtual reality, but at some point, you have to just kind of stick a stake in the ground and say this is what we’re going to focus on and go to town.
And the business side of it, you niched down to what should be focused on, you tried a bunch of different things and you learn from it and learn what did work, what didn’t work and then really niche down and how you’re focused in on it.
The key is to be at the right place at the right time!
22:44 – Virtual Age today!
The Samsung Gear VR, this is the thing that you could plug your phone into and actually see virtual reality!
- It’s cool and what you can see in there is pretty neat and it’s you know it’s almost like 360 degrees or at least 210 degrees and you feel like you’re in the situation, however that may be.
- So, for them to call the Samsung Gear stuff VR and for them to call the HTC vive and VR or the Oculus Rift VR, it’s like saying this Maserati is a nice car and this Volkswagen Jetta is a nice car.
- If you go in and try a Samsung gear and think that’s the best VR experience you can get, the gear is the high end of the crap.
- You could get into the gear or Samsung or not Samsung but Google cardboard for like $15 dollars and if you have an iPhone you can still use those.
27:18 – Matterport
They’re doing virtual tours of houses and if you’re not adapting this into your real estate business, you’re just silly. You know, but unfortunately, it’s like the fax machine…in the beginning there was only one fax machine it was useless, but as others came on board, the more useable it became.
29:58 – Actions Steps for VR Business
- Be insanely curious!
- Dive in and learn what you can do about the potential markets.
- Assess where the real opportunity aligns with your strengths, your interests in the market need.
- If you can figure that out, if you’re good at it excited about it and people want to pay for it dive in deep.
Connect with Terry on this VR episode and learn the design ideas & VR experienced!!
EZVR1 Website
EZVR1 Facebook
EZVR1 Twitter
Their blog is designed to provide general information on Virtual Reality and really specific info about VR Arcades.
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