Pots of Gold Along VR’s Long Road

Why you should be building for VR now and how to identify opportunities by examining “what won’t change”.

Over the last couple months, both Facebook and Google held their respective developer conferences and VR featured prominently in both. It is clear that both companies continue to invest heavily in immersive tech and view it as one of the next big computing platforms. In addition to demoing new tools and technology, both emphasized the long road ahead for VR.

“…I don’t think that there is really a strategy to pull [VR’s trajectory] in from ten years to five; I just think it’s going to be a 10 year thing.” — Mark Zuckerberg

Clay Bavor, VP of VR/AR at Google, published an insightful piece entitled, “Virtual and Augmented Realities: Asking the right questions and traveling the path ahead” in which he talked about what needs to change for VR to reach its potential.

We can all agree that these are still early days for VR with a long road ahead for the industry to reach its full potential. New technologies need to be invented, while existing technologies need to get better and cheaper. But don’t make the mistake of conflating a 10 year industry roadmap with a lack of opportunity today. Focusing on “what needs to change” is useful for laying out a roadmap, but examining “what won’t change” is a better framework for identifying opportunities today. At Amazon, Jeff Bezos examines “what won’t change” because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.

“I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ … [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection.” — Jeff Bezos

To identify opportunities within VR, evaluate “what won’t change” and how VR will enhance those trends. For example, something that will not change over the next 10 years is that content consumption and creation will continue to increase. People are enjoying content more than ever, and we’re in a golden age of content creation on many fronts. VR opens up whole new possibilities for content consumption and creation.

Big companies focused on long term strategy and building out 10 year roadmaps, oftentimes, are blind to new consumer behaviors resulting in opportunities for startups, developers and creatives. These emergent use cases can start off looking like toys or gimmicks but actually tap into fundamental consumer behaviors that evolve for new platforms. VR offers unique opportunities to create new apps and experiences based on the premise that content consumption and creation will continue to increase.

Content Consumption

Many of the most popular mobile apps are built around content consumption. Breakout hits offer customers a more engaging way to view and interact with content or enable new content formats to deliver fresh experiences.

VR makes content more immersive than ever. BigScreen VR is an excellent example of an experience that leverages the unique capabilities of VR and applies it to existing content. In a recent post, Darshan Shankar, CEO BigScreen VR writes, “Bigscreen is approaching a specific question: how will VR and AR headsets change the way we use our computers?… we aim to build a platform that enables people to use existing content, apps, and games in VR, and to socialize and hangout in a shared virtual space with their friends and coworkers.” At Viro, we describe this approach as “VR as a canvas”. Reimagine Instagram or Snapchat stories in VR or redesign a scroll feed experience in VR. Apps that utilize the infinite screen real estate of VR to create better ways to consume and digest existing content will find an audience.

VR has also enabled new content types including 360 photos/video and stereoscopic content which have shown very high consumer engagement. There is a reason Facebook, Periscope and others are pushing 360 into our feeds. These new formats represent a greenfield for app developers to build an engaged audience around immersive experiences. Right now, there are a lot of “X for VR” companies, which take an existing concept and try to apply it to VR (e.g. YouTube for VR). One issue with this approach is that it often results in a derivative product that can easily be replicated by the company you are trying to supplant (player X). Instead focus on creating new consumer behaviors. The opportunity here is to do something that is unique to VR. Rather than building a portal for 360 videos, create a new format for VR content that is unique to your product.

Content Creation

Content creation in VR is hard. But content creation for every platform was hard until the right tools were built and a robust developer community was established. There is a large number of potential customers who want to build content for VR but are struggling due to a lack of tools.

Tools for Consumers/Creators

There are many reasons why Instagram became successful but one was that it let people create photos like a professional using filters. What is the filter or enhancement your app can enable that makes is easier and better to create immersive content? The breakout success will probably not be something obvious like faster stitching but instead something that people dismissed as trivial or “not true VR”.

Tools for Enterprise

In addition to tools for end users and creators, the VR industry is lacking in enterprise tools. Consider what verticals are best served by VR now and what tools do they need to quickly create VR experiences. From 360 real estate tours to immersive travel experiences to classroom learning, companies recognize the value of VR but are struggling to create content. There are no established leaders in any of these spaces but plenty of demand for better tools.

VR App Development

In addition to enterprise tools, many companies/brands are looking for developer resources to build out custom VR apps. VR experiences can differentiate a brand from a competitor and deliver higher engagement with customers. But most of these dollars are going to a small number of game studios and dev shops. With the emergence of new tools, such as WebVR and Viro Media, VR development is no longer restricted to specialized game developers. Existing web and mobile dev shops can quickly establish themselves as experts in VR by building out a couple VR experiences for companies. Oftentimes, the building blocks for custom/contracted projects can be modified into enterprise tools for a wider audience.

First Mover Advantages

While being first does not guarantee success, there are advantages to being early in the lifecycle of an industry. By developing for VR now, you can reap the benefits of first mover advantage in three ways.

First, there are large distribution advantages in early market that disappear quickly. Emerging platforms like Daydream, Oculus and HTC are actively helping to promote new apps because there are still relatively few titles in each store (i.e. there are approximately 150 apps on the Daydream store). If you are one of the top apps in any of the VR platform stores, you will get significant support from the platform partners resulting in more downloads and engagement. Comparatively, there are over 2M apps in both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. (Try getting Apple’s app store team to feature your iOS app.)

Top results for “360 Photos” (iOS App Store)

Yet even in the iOS and Google Play stores, VR apps are finding success due to a lack of competition. You can be a little fish in a big pond and try to launch the 10,000th photo sharing app or you can be the big fish in the little pond that is projected to become an ocean. According to a recent Google Blog Post, “There have been 160 million downloads of Cardboard apps on Google Play — and 30 of those apps have more than 1 million downloads.” Users are viewing lots of immersive content and are downloading apps to find that content.

Second, by being early to the VR market, you can establish yourself as a brand. NextVR, Within and Penrose are all examples of VR first companies establishing themselves as the brands for their respective verticals. Whether you want to be the brand name for a vertical like Zillow for real estate or you want to be a brand across a constellation of VR apps like Zynga for mobile games, building early in a market can give you a significant advantage in establishing a brand.

Lastly, being early gives you access to customer insights that can help you iterate faster than your competition. One of the keys to success is to build, test, learn, repeat. Listen to Reid Hoffman interview with Mark Zuckerberg on his podcast Masters of Scale to understand how Facebook got value from building and releasing early. By starting now, you can test your ideas with a community of passionate early adopters and gain insights into VR consumption that will keep you one step ahead of the late arrivals.

Final Thoughts

These are the early days of VR with a long road ahead for the industry to reach its full potential. But we can see that there is significant opportunity today when we think about “what won’t change” and how VR will enhance those trends.

A recent Bloomberg article profiled the acquisition of Outfit7 — Why Did a Chinese Peroxide Company Pay $1 Billion for a Talking Cat?

Steve Jobs had introduced the Apple App Store the year before… Their first few attempts bombed… Then, after six months of misfires, the Logins built a children’s game in which an animated cat, Talking Tom, repeats in a high-pitched helium squeak whatever is spoken into an iPhone’s microphone… Talking Tom Cat was an instant hit, launching a franchise whose titles have reached №1 in more than 100 countries on the App Store.

Outfit7 is an interesting example finding success by being early in a market with a product no one predicted. Lots of people think they know what consumers want/need. In reality, we are all blind to emergent consumer behavior until it has already blown up. The market is the ultimate decider and you don’t know what will be embraced until you build it and get it in the hands of consumers. By starting now, you can build the next big thing and learn from your customers while others wait on the side for the long road to be finished.

Sign up for the Viro platform and start building your VR experiences today. You can get setup and start developing in under 5 mins with our Quick Start Guide.