Gu Yongqiang: Youku VR has signed up with 80% of the domestic content production team, but content payment is still early

According to data, Youku VR has signed contracts with 80% of the domestic high-quality VR content production team and has more than 50 overseas strategic partners.

Just before iQiyi announced its own VR ecosystem plan, Youku Tudou held a VR strategy conference. However, in addition to some still familiar guest lineups and partners, what is slightly different from iQiyi's "true ecology" gameplay is that Youku's VR strategy has been partially implemented in aspects such as production, application, monetization, and investment.

It is understood that in terms of current VR content, Youtu mainly adopts a combination of co-production and self-production. Among them, variety VR content includes "Mars Intelligence Agency","Extreme Challenge","National Beautiful Girl","Kangxi Comes", etc.; Music VR content includes Shang Wenjie's latest MV, TFboys MV, Bigbang MV, Edison Chen's alien companion MV, etc.; In addition, there are also travel VR live programs, Yu Minhong's Journey of Brother Hong,"Challenge Impossible" Climbing Mount Everest, etc.

Launched multiple VR content products and established a fund to solve copyright issues in advance

, Gu Yongqiang, chairman and CEO of Unity Group, said that Youku has been paying attention to the VR field since mid-2015 and has begun some investment activities. In addition to docking more hardware devices, this VR strategy is more important through joint production or copyright cooperation with the world's top production companies and top stars.

At the press conference, Youku also launched "McDull" in cooperation with Digital Kingdom,"Raven" in cooperation with Reload Studios, and the VR versions of "Divergent 2" and "Hunger Games 3" in cooperation with Lionsgate Films, and the first domestic VR short film "Black Fairy Tales" collaborated with Digital Kingdom and Yixing Media. Looking at these different titles, there may not be any intuitive figures. According to official public data, Youku VR's APP has been launched and has nearly 20000 VR videos.

According to data, Youku VR has signed contracts with 80% of the domestic high-quality VR content production team and has more than 50 overseas strategic partners. But in fact, many VR content entrepreneurs said that although the country seems to be hot, there are actually not many production teams with real skills, and even fewer focus on the scope of film and television.

In order to solve the scarcity of VR content, Youku chose to establish a fund pool to incubate excellent VR projects itself. It is understood that Youku has a very close relationship with Digital Kingdom and Yixing Media. In addition to jointly launching the VR short film "Black Fairy Tales", the three parties also announced that they will launch the "100 VR Video Collection Plan" and the "Training Plan for Directors and Relevant Public", used to incubate VR projects.

In addition, Youku also announced a partnership with Huayan Capital to jointly establish the first early-stage cutting-edge technology fund focusing on VR/AR technology, with an investment scale of millions.

Although the current VR content platform competition is not fierce, most production teams will choose multi-channel cooperation, but with the development of competition later, their own IP, exclusive charges, video industry today's play can still be copied to VR content field, and their own fund practice, undoubtedly solved the copyright charge possible problem at the beginning.

VR content paid for? It's still early! Although

Gu Yongqiang believes that today's content situation is more like the situation when he first started making videos ten years ago. "At that time, we were all talking about the micro-video era, so we think that now is the micro-video era of VR. It is not very reliable from content production to VR blockbusters, but it is entirely possible to have a 10-minute or 20-minute interactive experience." He said in an interview with the media.

"When we were a Youku member ten years ago, it was difficult to pay for general content. At that time, there were two problems: piracy and mobile payment. In different places nowadays, users are increasingly willing to pay, especially for high-quality content." Gu Yongqiang said that self-made or co-produced VR video charging models with mature technology and content, as well as introducing overseas content, are also one of his future payment strategies.

When describing the broad market prospects of VR content, Gu Yongqiang also compared it with the film market in China,"Nowadays, the box office in China is almost surpassing that in the United States. For high-quality content and differentiated content, China users are willing to pay." Gu Yongqiang told reporters that although he also admitted that it is too early to talk about monetization.

Zhang Cunna, vice president of Heyi Group, said that in the United States, VR has become a hot topic in Hollywood. In the content industry, almost every company talks about this topic. They prefer to use technology to enhance the participation of content and increase the appeal of content. "From the 3D of Avatar to the current VR, this is the use of technology to enhance the appeal of content," Zhang Cunna told a titanium media reporter.

With the ripening of capital, will the explosion in the VR content field come early? The

development of VR content is still in its infancy, which is almost beyond doubt. Based on previous interview conclusions, the optimistic estimate is that a major explosion of VR content will not be ushered in next year or the year after, and competition from distribution platforms may instead come faster.

Clearly, competition for distribution platforms is coming. The first is the advance layout and competition for content among video websites. The second is the squeeze of hardware and video websites as mainstream distribution platforms on the living space of small and medium-sized distribution platforms.

So what about the explosion of VR content? Capital is a ripening agent in the market. We have understood this truth well in fields such as O2O and sharing economy. Is the same applicable in the VR field? A CEO of a startup in the field of VR content told Titanium Media that capital may play a certain role in promoting it, but whether it will usher in an explosion is also related to the platform's production capabilities. "When the production capabilities of the entire industry are not so strong, the ability of capital is always limited." said the entrepreneur.

Another interesting point is that Youku's VR plan will also join forces with Alibaba's e-commerce link to help its partners in the industry chain cultivate 30 million panoramic VR users. A few days ago, iQiyi also said that it hopes its plan can promote China's VR market to 10 million terminal sales.

So, no matter whether the explosion in the content field will come early, the popularity of hardware devices may be realized soon.

Editor: yvonne