Leader of Google’s Virtual Reality (VR) team Clay Bavor announced on Thursday at Google’s I/O 2016 conference that leading Chinese game developer NetEase has become one of the first 10 major game developers supporting Google’s VR platform Daydream, introduced together with Android and AI updates.
Presented also at the event was Twilight Pioneers, a VR action role-playing game that NetEase developed for Daydream, to be launched this November.
Senior director of NetEase Games Simon Zhu told AllChinaTech: “VR is undoubtedly a future focus of ours. By emphasizing not quantity but quality, we’re working to ensure that our product offers a great user experience.”
Last February, NetEase established a division in North America, working to release its mobile games overseas. Zhu said that NetEase Games, despite some achievements, is still at an early stage moving into overseas markets. He said that efforts must be taken in developing new genres of games.
According to Analysys, the market for online games in China was worth RMB 136.2 billion in 2015. The number is predicted to reach RMB 151.6 billion in 2018. Data from NetEase show that the company’s annual net income in 2015 was RMB 22.8 billion (USD 3.5 billion), amongst which online games generated RMB 17.3 billion, a year-on-year growth of 86.9%.
Daydream is a new virtual reality hardware and software platform that Google built upon Android N, Google’s latest Android mobile operating system.
Google Cardboard was released two years ago. A total of over five million units have been shipped by this February, and the Cardboard platform has gained more than 50 million downloads of VR apps from the Play Store.
To surpass Cardboard, Daydream will address the “motion-to-photon latency” problem and offer a better VR gaming experience.
Daydream requires specific hardware components to be compatible, including special varieties of sensors and screens.
The Daydream-compatible phones available this fall are produced by Samsung, HTC, LG, Huawei, Alcatel, ZTE, Xiaomi, and Asus.
(Top photo from Baidu Images)