Sanqi Mutual Entertainment VR investment landscape expands and will invest in VR heavy game company Tianshe Culture

Sanqi Mutual Entertainment announced on the evening of the 7th that it would invest RMB 10 million in VR game startup Tianshe (Shanghai) Culture Media Co., Ltd. and obtain a 15% stake after its capital increase is completed. This is the second time Sanqi Mutual Entertainment has made an investment in the field of virtual reality after it announced its investment in Canadian VR game developer Archiact in March this year.

Original title: The VR ecosystem of Sanqi Mutual Entertainment is looming: After signing Archiact, the VR investment landscape of Tianshe Culture Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, a major VR game company

, has expanded again.

Sanqi Mutual Entertainment announced on the evening of the 7th that it would invest RMB 10 million in VR game startup Tianshe (Shanghai) Culture Media Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as Tianshe Culture) and obtain a 15% stake after its capital increase is completed. This is the second time Sanqi Mutual Entertainment has made an investment in the field of virtual reality after it announced its investment in Canadian VR game developer Archiact in March this year.

As early as March this year, at the 3rd China International Game Conference (hereinafter referred to as CIGC), Li Yifei, founder and president of Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, made it clear in an interview with the media that investing in VR companies is not to follow market hotspots, but to enrich the company's business and expand its strategic territory, and revealed that Sanqi Mutual Entertainment is more inclined to invest in content-based companies. Now it seems that VR has become an important strategic direction for Sanqi Mutual Entertainment's investment layout in just four months. From "light" to "heavy" investment strategy, from online to offline, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment has obviously taken a comprehensive view of the VR layout.

1 Tianshe Culture: Heavy VR games + offline exploration and decryption

Tianshe Culture is the leading VR game developer in China. Compared with the previous Canadian VR game company Archiact, Tianshe Culture's VR games are more serious. Coupled with the different business models of VR games at home and abroad, different ways of playing have also been formed.

The company's official website shows that Tianshe Culture is a company focusing on the design, development and operation of virtual reality content, customizing virtual reality products for customers in various fields. The products are mainly developed using Unreal Engine 4 or Unity engines and are compatible with virtual reality devices such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStationVR, and GearVR. Some products will be registered on platforms such as the Oculus Store, Steam, PS Store and Google Play.

It is understood that the main members of Tianshe Culture come from 2K Games and Five-Star Dianping offline real-life secret room escape shop, and have rich experience in game development and design. The company has extensive involvement and in-depth layout in heavy VR game research and development, offline VR theme park solution delivery and vertical community operations for VR enthusiasts.

As one of the earliest VR game startups, Tianshe Culture also operates the online VR virtual reality game community-17AVR, the "Virtual Reality Games" Weixin Official Accounts, and the Oculus rift Baidu Post Bar. In addition to providing game resource downloads and player discussion areas, it also regularly organizes offline activities and gatherings.

Chen Sheng, co-founder of Qianshe Culture, said in an interview with the media that the game will mainly charge for online downloads overseas, and try to use offline channels in China. Experience in the design and operation of secret room escape makes the company more experienced when extending offline.

At this stage, the market for VR games still needs to be cultivated. The number of users and the penetration rate of high-end VR equipment are still low. Therefore, offline will be the first market to mature. Tianshe Culture's ability to experience online and offline also makes it more competitive than other VR game developers.

2 Archiact with left hand and Tianshe with right hand, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment VR game terminal has completed systematic layout

Through this strategic investment, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment has been successfully deployed into the field of heavy and offline VR games.

Coupled with Archiact, the overseas mobile VR game project announced its investment in March this year, after completing the investment in Archiact and Tianshe, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment will have two leading VR game teams in both overseas and domestic markets, heavy core and light core types., the landscape on the VR game side is beginning to emerge.

These two companies have just formed a differentiation. The two teams are good at light-core and mobile VR games, the other is good at heavy VR games, the other is familiar with overseas markets, and the other is familiar with domestic user groups. The synergy effect is quite obvious.

According to reports, as one of the world's largest publishers of VR mobile games, Archiact currently owns dozens of self-developed and agent Gear VR mobile games. At present, the company's domestic business has advanced. It has distributed mobile VR games to the domestic market and established cooperative relationships with a number of mainstream hardware manufacturers and platforms. These domestic manufacturers will provide product optimization and localization assistance. At the same time, Archiact will also go offline, which means that there may be more cooperation with Tianshe Culture in the next step.

Archiact's new generation of offline experience products will be available soon, and a new immersive multiplayer space virtual reality experience product will be announced next month. Archiact will also provide customized high-end solutions for theme parks and other places, a business currently under negotiation.

Li Yifei, founder and president of Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, said that after the investment is completed, Archiact and Tianshe will expand the offline market, cooperate in the research and development of high-quality games, and have a lot of cooperation in co-creation. As a shareholder and resource integrator, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment will give resource support, create environment, and hope to have chemical reaction between the two projects to create more VR game masterpieces.

Although

there are still many disputes about VR layout of listed companies in the market, Li Yifei has expressed his optimism about VR market prospects on many occasions.

Li Yifei once bluntly said that investing in VR companies is definitely not a hot spot to follow the market, and said that VR in the future, may be 2018, may also be later, it will subvert many industries.

So for Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, an Internet company that is embracing pan-entertainment, VR investment must be combined with the company's strategic goals.

Li Yifei said that for Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, whether it is investment in pan-entertainment or investment outside of pan-entertainment, it must be content-oriented. This effect is also reflected in VR."We have IP in our hands, and the future of VR also needs IP." According to Sanqi Mutual Entertainment's future plan, it will be a pan-entertainment company in three to five years, and the VR field is its strategic choice to enrich its business connotation.

As the next screen, VR is inherently entertainment. Entertainment content such as movies, movies, and games must be just needed, and VR games will be the easiest business model to popularize and monetize. Qiang Xiaodan, head of Sanqi Mutual Entertainment Investment, believes that in the future, mobile VR games (such as mid-to-light core VR games based on Samsung Gear), heavy VR games (such as heavy games based on Ouclus, HTC, and Steam) and offline VR games will have a lot of imagination. Among them, mobile VR games and offline games will become popular quickly. This is the first area where Sanqi Mutual Entertainment was laid out.

Qiang Xiaodan said that in the future, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment will deploy the entire VR industry chain through an extended investment method. According to Sanqi Mutual Entertainment's genes and synergy with its core business, it will pay more attention to investment in VR games and content. Opportunities and make more strategic arrangements in VR games and content. In the future, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment hopes to systematically deploy value areas in the VR industry chain such as VR games/content, VR interactions, VR social networking, and VR industry applications, and ultimately form an ecosystem.

From this point of view, it is foreseeable that Sanqi Mutual Entertainment's investment in the VR field is only just beginning.

Editor: yvette