A virtual reality experience room at the 74th Venice Film Festival. Photo credit: Eddie Lou.
In a small cafe near a street of embassies in Beijing, some of the world’s best virtual reality films are on display. As I sit down to drink tea, a young woman walks in and asks for Allumette, a 20-minute animation that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.
“All the VR cinemas [in China] are fairly new,” says Cedric Garcia, head of content at Yue Cheng Technology, which opened two VR cinemas in Beijing this year, including the cafe where we’re chatting now.
That’s because most virtual reality film studios are overseas, he explains. There used to not be enough content made in China. But that’s changed.
The global VR industry – projected to hit US$7 billion in revenue this year – is experiencing a chicken-and-egg problem, where bottlenecks in hardware and content, along with high costs, feed viciously into each other. Because there aren’t high quality yet affordable headsets for consumers, VR content makers are struggling to sell their work. Likewise, the dearth of engaging content makes it difficult for hardware developers to convince consumers to buy their own high-end headsets.
Experts see offline venues such as virtual reality arcades, where users can try games without buying their own equipment, as a way to fill this gap in the short term. In China, there are an estimated 12,000 brick-and-mortar VR experience centers – though generating profit continues to be a struggle.
“Offline experience centers have become an important way to educate the VR market,” explains Men Yuxiao, an analyst at Chinese research firm iResearch. “They can accelerate the development of the entire VR industry.”
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Yue Cheng Technology’s tiny cafe cinema. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.
In particular, VR cinemas constitute a new channel for filmmakers, which target a different subset of virtual reality enthusiasts from gamers. “The two genres have very different user needs,” emphasizes Lei Zhengmeng, CEO and co-founder of Pinta Studios, a Beijing-based VR film studio.
“Gamers want to play, whereas moviegoers care more about the storytelling experience,” he adds.
Testing the waters
Though virtual reality cinemas are still in their early stages, there’s already a lot of diversity in layout and design. Yue Cheng Technology’s cafe is a tiny one-seater, where anyone who buys a drink can try its VR set for free. Its second cinema, however, which sits inside a big-box electronics retailer, charges US$5 to US$12 for a day pass, depending on the time and day of the week. Every week, the company curates four to five pieces.
In Amsterdam, however, The VR Cinema seats around 20 people and comes with a classy bar and lounge. The Dutch venue is one of the world’s first VR movie theaters and actually inspired Yue Cheng Technology’s CEO Gu Bin to pivot from public relations consulting to the VR industry in January. Here, tickets are charged per half-hour of viewing at US$10.50.
Different still is X-Cube in Shanghai, which opened just last month. The VR cinema has seven seats and is housed inside a normal movie theater. It charges moviegoers US$3 to US$4.50 per film.
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Source: Tech in Asia