Byte PICO "Small" road

Compared with PICO players and Quest players, you will find huge differences between the two.

A senior VR practitioner said: "PICO players are mostly leisure and entertainment, and most of them are small white players who have been in contact with VR for the first time. Quest players are mostly hard -core gamers. The time for contacting VR is generally long."

The cause of this situation is related to the two playbacks in ecological construction.

When PICO was exposed in the early days, the demonstration scene was concentrated in the direction of home entertainment and visual effects. The long -term recommended applications on PICO Store are also sports and rhythm of "Ohshape", "Multi -One Movement VR" and other sports categories and rhythms. Satellite games.

Instead, in the Quest Store's long -term domination is relatively hard -core game masterpieces such as "Blade & Sorcery" and "Onward".

In addition, PICO has recently been more leisure and entertainment in content ecological construction and update. On May 17th, Zheng Jun's "We Are" VR private singing meeting was held; on June 6, film and television companies such as Disney created the "PICO 3D blockbuster re -combustion plan".

From sports mini -games to short videos, to 3D film and television works, today's PICO seems to have formed a set of play differentiation in Quest. What is the effect of this kind of great play? After quickly pushing away, can the user's retain and develop the habit of secondary consumption? Does the pico ecosystem really do not need a masterpiece?

Little production stares at Xiaobai

After walking a hardware -laid road similar to QUSET, Pico changed its play in ecological construction.

In August last year, the byte beating put PICO into the pocket at a price of 9.7 billion yuan, completely changing its destiny. From Douyin's opening advertisement, uninterrupted live broadcast, various information flow push to the Spring Festival Gala, sponsorship variety shows, and to large -scale offline experience stores, some "brainwashing" marketing created by the bytes for PICO Push it to the front line of the domestic VR hardware market.

Earlier this year, PICO launched the semi -price delivery activity, which directly lowered the consumption threshold and increased user stickiness. Even under wave after strong marketing offensive, PICO will also sell the sales target in 2022 from 1 million in May from 1 million It was adjusted to 1.8 million units on the stage. You must know that PICO's sales last year were only 500,000 units.

According to PICO CEO Zhou Hongwei, Pico's transformation is divided into three stages: "hardware-marketing orientation-content orientation". The huge marketing investment points to the short -term goal of quickly opening the market, that is, the second stage. After sales and active users have reached a certain level, PICO also started to move in content.

However, unlike Quest's strategy to ignite the market with explosive 3A masterpieces, PICO chose to start with a small game with a lower development threshold, and at the same time shifted to pan -entertainment directions such as videos and social networking. This can be seen from the team formed by Pico.

Earlier, LatePost reported that the person in charge of the byte beating has been transferred to the PICO department to build the content and marketing team.

It is reported that the person in charge of the watermelon video Ren Lifeng, the head of Douyin Variety Song Binghua, and Wu Zuomin, director of Douyin Entertainment, have successively transferred to the VR product department.

Among them, Song Binghua used to be the general manager of the Yutku Variety Supervision Center of Alibaba Entertainment Group. It is the director system of explosion programs such as hip -hop "Mars Intelligence Bureau. It can be seen that byte beating attaches great importance to pico film and television content.

The different marketing ideas are actually different people.

Different from the route that starts from hardcore players such as QUSET and other foreign VR products, PICO's play is to attract small white people with less digital devices in the past.

Recent data shows that the male audience of the Douyin topic#近 近 近 Pico#is only 32.9%, and the proportion of female audiences accounts for 67.91%. Previously, the ratio of male and female users released in PICO in 2019 is still 9: 1, and although there is no specific data in 2021, Zhou Hongwei also said that PICO's users are mainly men in first -tier and second -tier cities.

On the other hand, this is also the inevitable result of the pico content ecosystem under the intervention of byte beating. As we all know, the strength of byte beating in self -developed games is not good.

Beginning in 2021, the byte beating game business continued to be bad. First, the leisure game Ohayoo was cut off. Later, many medium -weight games including "Strike Royale" and "End of the Battlefield" were also removed or stopped. Even At the end of the year, the Gaming Gaming sector, which was just established at the end of the year, was also reported many times after May this year that the business was shrinking.

Instead, the bytes of bytes starting with short videos have certain advantages and resource reserves in entertainment, film and television. Therefore, PICO uses this pan -entertainment ecological construction method, which can also completely draw the advantages of byte beating.

However, this low -cost player centered on pan -entertainment also has a taste of drinking thirst.

Big problem under small cost

In the actual experience, whether playing games or watching movies is slightly embarrassing with Pico. After contacting different user groups, you can draw such a conclusion.

"I was considered the group of people who were brainwashed by Pico marketing. At that time, I wanted to buy to chase the drama and contact IDOL closely, but I didn't expect to really use it so." Chi Xia sighed to "New Knowledge of Science and Technology". Immersive, close -range, 8K HD, 3D VR, is the most mentioned when PICO has mentioned its movie viewing experience. Especially after recently released the "3D blockbuster re -ignition plan", it has attracted a lot of attention from film and television fans.

One of them was in the early summer, "At first, it still felt relatively novel, but after two days, the freshness was temporarily put on hold. Most of the sisters I bought with me were also the same. Of course, this is also related to the actual experience of my personal experience."

For the "Eye Party", it takes a long time adjustment before wearing Pico, including location, tightness, and so on to solve the problem of water vapor. "Even if NEO3 has an exhaust hole design, it still cannot completely solve the problem of water vapor."

In addition, for such film and television users in early summer, Pico's overall comfort is not good.

"It feels like a stone tied to the head, which can obviously feel the pressure of the neck. Because VR eyes are worn on the head after all, and the state of lying is basically lying during watching. The device is inevitable. It was pressing the face. After changing the headband with a battery, it felt that it was parallel front and back, but still had a sense of face. "In the early summer explanation.

In fact, the shortcomings in the hardware can also be adjusted by themselves. The most important thing is the disadvantage of the content experience, which cannot be changed in a short time.

"Frankly speaking, many people around me thought that as long as they brought this VR eye, they could be seen as a player in the play. They could see the details, as the offline VR experience store experienced. "Early summer said with a mockery.

The facts are that only individual videos can realize the real immersive. PICO's Marvel blockbuster, Disney blockbuster, etc. are presented in 3D, and the left and right sides are shadows. 3D videos feel similar, and it is better to be free than projection. "

PICO's approach is actually more related to funds and time costs. It is reported that the VR movie "LOST" produced by Oculus earlier was less than ten minutes, but it cost $ 10 million. And if you want to achieve the effect of VR, the movie needs to use professional shooting methods when shooting. For PICO, which is still in the early days, obviously there is no more energy to make real VR movies.

In terms of gaming experience, PICO is more general.

"The games that can be directly installed in the VR all -in -one machine are poor, and most of them are crudely made, almost the level of 4399." Senior VR game player Ming Dong said.

It is reported that in Pico malls, most of the hottest games are sports and rhythmic mini -games, and VR games such as "Arizona" and "SuperShot" are also selected to introduce after a long time.

"The streaming in the VR circle is relatively hot, and almost all hardcore players cannot do without streaming. In short, it is to link VR to the computer to play the role of a display. After streaming, you can play more games." Mingdong Say.

However, under the official network environment and device configuration, the game streaming of NEO 3 still has the problem of picture quality loss and audio and video delay, especially when the infinite streaming, even if it is adjusted to the worst smooth picture quality, it still is still adjusted to the most smooth picture quality. There will be stuttering phenomenon. Without a high -performance computer to support, the streaming experience will be greatly reduced.

"Compared with Quest, PICO's play does attract small white users, but for gamers, Pico does almost mean." Ming Dong said.

It also caused a new problem. In the ecology of Pico pan -entertainment, does it really need no masterpiece?

Do you need a masterpiece?

According to data from the Entertainment Software Association, about 29%of the 169 million gamers in the United States have VR devices. This is the user base of Oculus in the game content, but due to various factors in the Chinese market, users are more inclined to mobile games rather than host games.

Coupled with the high development threshold of VR games and the low probability of explosive models, it is not difficult to explain why byte beating is different from Quest. But in the long run, PICO also needs a masterpiece while developing the pan -entertainment ecology to detonate the market to drive revenue.

According to statistics, after the launch of "Half-Life: Alxy" in March 2020, the number of VR devices statistics from Steam increased by more than one million in the month; And the data is still rising; in November 2021, Meta announced that "Rhythm Light Sword" revenue on the Oculus Quest single platform exceeded $ 100 million.

In addition, explosive games such as "The Legend of Zelda", "Animal Mori Friends", "Fitness Ring Adventure" also visible to Switch's sales with the naked eye.

And for Pico, users brought by explosive games are more valuable than the users brought by the current pan -entertainment content.

At present, PICO's stock users are generally divided into two categories. One is an old user who has VR devices, that is, hard -core gamers; the other is the first new user who is in contact with VR, because considering cost -effectiveness, using portability, portable portability Wait for the factors to start with VR all -in -one machine. Most of the users brought by the content strategy of Pico are second users, and as mentioned above, in related topics, female users have far exceeded male users, that is, female users among these new users The growth rate is significantly higher than that of men.

But as far as VR games are concerned, male users pay a higher proportion.

On the one hand, some investigations have shown that most women are more interested in VR games with excellent screen production and interactive story types, and they are more willing to pay for props and skin in the game; on the other hand, according to foreign researchers investigations, there are 22.6 22.6 %Of female users have frequently experienced VR halo, which is more than three times that of male users (7.2%). Under the circumstances of poor experience, it is difficult for users to pay further.

In addition, PICO's hardware is still in the stage of popularization. On major e -commerce platforms, you can still see the "check -in half -price" welfare event launched by Pico, that is, if the user completes the challenge, it will only take a NEO3 for only more than 1,000 yuan. Data show that the completion rate of consumers currently participating in the event is about 50%.

On the one hand, the low -cost strategy means that PICO is almost losing money in hardware, and on the other hand, this strategy easily affects the emotions of some consumer impulse shopping.

How much retention can be provided by these a moral patients and impulsive consumers, and whether it can be converted into active users. This may be the core issue that PICO needs to face when promoting the pan -entertainment content ecosystem.

The "small white user ecology" established by mini -games and film and television may not be outstanding in subsequent content revenue. In the long run, PICO still needs to use some explosive applications to improve user quality and user retention rate.

Standing on the stand -alone stand, obviously when the domestic VR market has not fully erupted, it rely on ultra -traffic exposure to seek hardware sales and quickly spread out the market share; In order to realize the dual -line expansion in sales and content ecosystems, first occupy the user's mind and market voice.

Whether this idea is correct and whether it can achieve breakthroughs in sales and content has no clear answer yet. But in the VR industry, there is a fact that is not that simple whether it is "big road" or "small road".

(In the early summer and Ming East in the text, they are all pseudonyms)

@创

Author 丨 Editor Wang Siyuan 丨 Yi Page

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