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Why Brands Are Racing To Pick A Virtual Reality Partner (And How To Pick A Good One)

This article is more than 8 years old.

Virtual reality is about to have a bumper year but then folks have said that for at least the last two years.  The reasons for this are stacking up; cheap units, an affordable entry price point, a hungry Hollywood and the right level of consumer interest all point to a good year for manufacturers and developers alike.  While still a way off from being a mass consumer product, VR already has more than $120 billion projected for it by 2020 (per DigiCapital) so it is easy to see why brands are interested.  As with a lot of new technologies, digital houses will undoubtedly learn on clients dimes until the specialist skillsets become commonplace.  Any missteps or mistakes will be costly.  As the chart below shows, there are a significant number of players already - picking the right partner has never been more crucial.  Who is doing good work?  How do you pick the right partner?

Look for someone who is talking sense to you.

If you make plasters, headache medicine and a raft of other less than suitable products for VR (think visual, experiential, exciting) you immediately have a harder gig than most brands.  Move into VR carefully and be wary of anyone who tells you this is how people want to know about your product.  The same rules apply - don't expect people to care because they have a foot sized screen on their face.  Currently VR is heavily skewed towards single, white, affluent males.

Pick people who know and understand when to extend and when to limit VR experiences.

The London-based team at Visualise were behind the Imagine Dragons demo that a lot of news outlets use producing a VR news story.  Will McMaster, Head of VR for Visualise, says to think big with VR; "[It's easy to think about the single viewer] but there is no limit to the number of people that can be on stage with the band, or in the best seat in the house. Suddenly the capacity of the gig jumps from 20,000 to millions."

Focus on the emotional before the technical aspect for long-term success.

"People buy emotionally, that goes both ways.  Don't be suckered into buying something that doesn't tell your message the right way from the outset." says Jamie Denham of Sliced Bread Animation (early pioneers in health VR environments). "VR is one of the few technologies that offers brands fully controlled immersive experiences.  Use VR beyond simply wow-ing the audience - you have that capability." Denham adds.

Look to the big guys for guidance but that's it.

Facebook owns Oculus Rift, Google has Google Cardboard, Samsung released a cheap unit and Apple is about to get into VR in a big way but they all have their own ecosystems and reasons to be in the sandbox.  These are goalposts for you to consider but there is no proprietary technology to leverage - they are merely pipes to push people to your product through - use them as such.

Understand the fractured creation environment and focus your strategy

Virtual Reality lacks a single language or sets of standards and can be problematic during development and publishing phases warms Alon Melchner, President of WakingApp; "When you’re dealing with conventional development platforms, publishing for devices like Google Cardboard, Samsung GearVR and HTC Vive will require different versions and different outputs, so when you’re doing a project, be sure to understand what the output will be and what it will cost to maintain compatibility with the latest viewing hardware and control peripherals as they come out."

Understand the market before you push the technology.

As the pyramid above shows - there are major players involved but not all are at the same stage.  Apple only recently bought Metaio (a small VR/AR company) but it will take time for Apple to create a market while Facebook (who owns Oculus), Sony , Samsung and co push forward to the early-adopter and gaming crowds.  Currently the Augmented Reality and VR markets are closely aligned but this may not stay the same for very long - lines are already being drawn in the sand.