VR start-up company Steel Wool Studios recently completed a round of financing of US$5 million (equivalent to RMB33.4 million). The investor is HTC Corporation, a hardware manufacturer of HTC Vive.
Founded in 2012, Steel Wool Studios is headquartered in California, formerly known as Steel Wool Games, and the founders team from Pixar, Lucasfilm, Intel and Telltale Games. The early stage of the company's development was mainly devoted to the research and development of mobile games. In 2014, the company's founders visited Valve's headquarters and began the development of the prototype of the Vive headset at the earliest stage. After that, the company quickly put into the creation of VR content.
It is understood that the HTC Mammoth 33.4 million is also a reason. Steel Wool Studios and HTC have had business cooperation in the past. In April this year, this studio launched the first vr game "Quar: Battle for Gate 18" for HTC Vive, which became the exclusive game for htc vive.
Steel Wool Studios has accumulated some experience through the release of "Quar" and decided to invest in vr games. It is reported that the VR product under development is an interactive simulation experience called "Mars Odyssey" that allows players to complete the repair of NASA's Mars Adventure Rovers in a virtual reality environment. task. The studio used NASA's engineer's schematic when creating the Mars Odyssey. The work will be on Steam on September 9.
HTC to guide investment trends, or to become a new way out of the dilemma
Although the HTC Vive is famous, as its hardware manufacturer, HTC and the V company as a game company are in disagreement on the demand. V Club hopes that VR hardware will not be too expensive and high threshold, so as to facilitate popularization. While HTC Vive is precisely synonymous with high cost and high threshold, the contradiction of this appeal leads to HTC must prepare for retreat. It seems that HTC is not just an integrated platform under the layout line Vive port, using the unique vision of top VR manufacturers to lead the wind investment or another way out.
At the end of June this year, HTC led 28 wind investment agencies to form a super-consortium with a scale of US$10 billion and plans to increase investment in the VR market. The consortium's membership list includes well-known venture capital firms that once supported Apple, Google’s Sequoia Capital, Jingwei Venture Capital and 500 Startups.
This financing of Steel Wool Studios is its unique vision. HTC as a VR hardware manufacturer can naturally identify the real needs of the VR industry. And Steel Wool Studios had a lot of cooperation with HTC before, and its product quality was also very high.
Of course, this HTC-led investment boom will not end here. The huge investment consortium behind it has yet to exert its power to carry out banknotes. Under the guidance of a good "Bele", gold always shines. I hope that the influx of funds will bring more high-quality works to the VR industry.