As a mage, I just want to pursue the truth

Chapter 182 The Future Development of VR

"Junior brother, let me ask you another question first. What do you think about the future development of brain-computer connected VR?"

Lei Jun suddenly mentioned another matter.

Zheng Li said without hesitation: "We must develop in the direction of virtual reality. Brain-computer connection is currently a one-way transmission. In the future, when we achieve two-way transmission, virtual reality will not be far away."

Now it is equivalent to only converting brain nerve signals into electrical signals, but electrical signals cannot be converted into brain nerve signals.

In other words, players cannot perceive the taste and smell in the virtual world. They can only perceive vision, hearing, and a small part of touch.

Missing half of the five senses.

Lei Jun laughed and clapped his hands: "Hahaha, your business sense is just as sharp as mine."

"That's right. The long-term development direction of brain-computer VR is definitely virtual reality, and only virtual reality."

"For the three major industries of sci-tech biotechnology, innovative drugs require long-term efforts to wait for results, and now we can only rely on endorphins."

“As for lithium metal cathode materials, I don’t think Sinovation Biotech plans to expand horizontally in this field, but only focus on vertical development with its existing technological advantages.”

"Both of the above development directions are very good. I talked to you about it when we started the business. Don't be greedy. You are doing very well."

Zheng Li listened quietly. An entrepreneur who doesn’t like to express himself is not a good entrepreneur.

Zheng Li defines himself as a mage, and mages live in their own world most of the time.

Lei Jun continued: "The only development direction with the broadest future is brain-computer connection, which is a technology that can be expanded to all industries."

“It can become the basic technology of future society and be embedded in all aspects of society.”

"And this is exactly the direction that Kechuang Biotechnology is focusing on in brain-computer connection."

"VR, mobile phones, and medical devices, brain-computer connections are now mainly entering these three fields."

"I am looking forward to the combination of brain-computer connection and whole-house smart home. It is difficult for current technology to find a balance between functionality and portability."

"On the road to evolving into true virtual reality, brain-computer connection VR must not only involve breakthroughs in brain-computer connection technology, but also breakthroughs in the entire industrial chain."

"At this time, only by cooperating with the country can we promote breakthroughs in the entire technology industry chain."

"Although the shares sold by Kechuang Bio this time are only a small part, we will be able to participate in supporting and investing in companies in the entire industrial chain in the future."

Most of China's state-owned investment institutions have strong compliance requirements and low risk tolerance.

However, there are also investment institutions that are completely close to market-oriented operations. They have patience, money, and identification capabilities, and can select high-quality technology companies for investment and support.

China's large semiconductor fund has done a good job in this regard.

With over a million units sold in its first week, brain-computer connected VR can be preliminarily estimated to be an industry with an annual output value approaching 100 billion yuan, indirectly affecting an ecosystem worth more than 100 billion yuan.

If virtual reality can really be realized, and most of the upstream and downstream companies in this industry are in China, China will gain so much.

Virtual reality technology, Zheng Li can use biotechnology to realize virtual reality.

But this requires modifications to the human body.

At the same time, this virtual reality product is only a personal handmade product and does not have the capacity for large-scale industrial production.

To achieve the virtual reality technology that Blue Star imagines, all you need is a helmet that you can put on to enter the second world.

Zheng Li's technology is unable to achieve this effect.

This involves technological breakthroughs in many sub-sectors, including display, materials, communications, and so on.

The current bandwidth obviously cannot support the bandwidth capacity required for virtual reality networking.

Zheng Li's eyes lit up after hearing this: "Can I cooperate with the country in my personal name to set up a special investment company in the VR field and participate in the investment of the entire industry?"

Lei Jun nodded: "Of course."

"For the country, they are eager for you to get involved. You are the top technical expert, and your knowledge in the field of brain-computer connection VR is definitely the most thorough."

"If you communicate your ideas to the government, they will even let you make the final decision on investment intentions."

"But the workload is obviously not insignificant. You have to weigh whether you can handle it or not."

Lei Jun also wanted to get involved, but he didn't intend to trouble Zheng Li.

Originally, Lei Jun thought that he would never have the chance to see the real implementation of virtual reality technology in his lifetime.

But after getting to know Zheng Li, he changed his mind and believed that Zheng Li's existence would greatly promote the advancement of related technologies.

Lei Jun planned to go directly to the authorities as soon as the news got out before the investment company was established to see if he could get involved.

As for why this type of investment must be carried out at the government level, it is because only the government level can access the most related companies.

The information they have is the most complete and detailed.

If you rely solely on yourself, you will not be able to realize the investment in the entire industrial chain because there are too many projects to keep track of, and it is not easy to find gold in the sand.

Zheng Li nodded: "Okay, I'll let Miaomiao talk to the authorities later."

Due to the great success of brain-computer connection VR, it has been successful at least for now.

Three months later, sales of brain-computer VR have exceeded five million.

This sales volume is enough to support the long-term development of a platform if brain-computer VR is positioned only as a game console device.

Ren Yu was also recognized within Tencent for being the first executive to raise this issue and promote the implementation of the cooperation.

He is already the Chief Operating Officer, and above him is Pony Ma.

Xiao Ma Ge obviously has no plans to step down so early.

"Pico wants us to port Hero's End to their platform."

After the release of "Heroes' End", it did not disappoint the huge investment made by Tencent.

It has become a phenomenal online game on the VR platform, and its popularity is comparable to the early days of League of Legends.

Of course, considering that the ownership of VR and PC is not in the same order of magnitude, the comparison here is only in terms of proportion.

In the past, nine out of ten computers in Internet cafes were playing League of Legends. Now the same is true with brain-computer connected VR. Nine out of ten devices are playing Heroes of Doom.

Ren Yu was noncommittal: "What conditions can Pico offer?"

Although Tencent is the second largest shareholder of Kechuang Future, the ownership of these games lies in Tencent’s own hands.

It was not developed and issued by a joint venture.

"Pico expressed its willingness to sell part of its shares to us."

Previously, major domestic Internet giants have all made arrangements in the hardware field.

Tencent acquired Black Shark Technology, a company specializing in gaming phones. Ali became the only investor in the C round of financing for a well-known domestic AR glasses manufacturer.

But ByteDance still made the biggest move, spending 70 billion RMB to acquire Pico. It also seems to be their most successful in the Metaverse concept hardware.

I just didn’t expect Tencent to reach a cooperation with Ke Chuang Biotechnology to launch a groundbreaking VR product.

ByteDance is willing to sell its shares in Pico, which is a bold move.

Zhou Hongwei took great efforts to persuade Zhang.

Ren Yu smiled and said, "Zhou Hongwei is really persistent. He clearly knew it was impossible but he still insisted on coming to us."

The fundamental contradiction between ByteDance and Tencent is that everyone’s energy is limited, and every APP wants to grab users’ time. What ByteDance needs to do is to restrict Tencent’s software, and WeChat can just focus on its own communication services. Why does it need so many additional functions?

It’s both a circle of friends and a mini program.

ByteDance’s products have taken up users’ time, and Tencent’s product matrix has been able to obtain less traffic.

The essential contradiction between the two parties is to seize users' time and traffic.

As early as Q2022 1, short videos surpassed instant messaging for the first time in terms of average daily usage time of mobile Internet apps per person.

This was a landmark event, and the gap between the two sides gradually narrowed afterwards.

Short videos here include not only ByteDance products, but also Bilibili, Kuaishou, etc.

Therefore, if we only calculate the product usage time, Tencent is still above ByteDance, but the gap is very small.

Tencent’s strategic space has been greatly squeezed.

Before 2016, if someone said that Tencent and Ali would face fundamental challenges.

Everyone will think that the person who said this is crazy.

But in fact, the foundations of Tencent and Ali have indeed been undermined over the years.

Ali is even worse off than Tencent. It’s just that Tencent’s short videos have surpassed instant messaging, not that ByteDance has surpassed Tencent.

Ali's market share has been particularly squeezed by Pinduoduo. Douyin, as a new entrant, is also doing e-commerce, and JD.com is watching closely.

New and old players alike were eyeing the meat in Ahri's bowl.

The subordinates understood what he meant: "Then should I just reject them directly?"

Ren Yu shook his head and said, "Don't rush to reject them. I have an idea that I need to sort out."

“I will give Pico feedback after I have discussed the internal meeting.”

Brain-computer connection VR is an attempt by Tencent. Once the attempt is effective, it will increase investment.

In this case, cooperating with Pico is not in line with Tencent's style.

Not to mention that ByteDance is also the arch-enemy of Tencent.

The subordinates have many doubts in their minds.

At 6:30 in the afternoon, when he was eating in the Tencent cafeteria, Ren Yu called him over:
“I told Pico that the controls of Hero’s End were too complicated and not compatible with their product.”

“But Heroes of the Last Days and all Tencent’s VR products can be broadcast live on the Pico platform.”

"The rights to edit videos by individuals are also being opened up to ByteDance products."

It is rare for Tencent to be so generous. As early as 16, when ByteDance was not as prosperous as it is now, Tencent launched the first round of lawsuits against ByteDance for copyright infringement.

In the next five years, Tencent and ByteDance sued each other about 40 times in the field of copyright.

One of the more well-known cases is that Tencent requested to ban TikTok from spreading short videos of "Honor of Kings".

Including the "Sweeping Dark Storm" that was popular on the entire Internet that year, Tencent also required all related videos on Douyin to be removed.

Although Pico is not TikTok, as a company under ByteDance, it is no different from TikTok.

"Mark, I'm curious why you are willing to give Pico access this time."

Ren Yu said seriously: "Not for Pico, but for all VR devices."

“We won’t specifically port the game for other general VR platforms, but we need to allow all VR players to watch the live broadcast of Hero’s End.”

“Not only Heroes’ End, but also Assassin’s Creed, The Legend of Zelda, etc. These live broadcast contents must be visible to all VR players.”

“When they often watch live broadcasts of VR players connected to brain-computer interfaces, their next product will most likely be Futureverse.”

This is equivalent to cultivating the market. Pico users can see brain-computer connected VR players live streaming "Heroes of Doom".

As he enjoyed watching the live broadcast of this game, he naturally wanted to experience it himself.

After finding out that Pico does not support the game, if his financial situation is not sufficient to support him to purchase a brain-computer connected VR device, the next VR device will only be Futureverse.

"Our strategy is called an open conspiracy. It depends on whether Pico wants traffic or survival space."

Tencent's operation is beneficial to Pico in the short term, but in the long run, Pico is equivalent to turning its own users into potential users of brain-computer VR.

The subordinate thought for a moment and understood the power of this move: "What if Pico doesn't want to?"

Ren Yu: "If they don't want to, then they don't want to. It's not their turn to be unwilling to do what we want to do."

“We communicated with all the major live streaming platforms under our umbrella and asked them to develop a dedicated regular VR version of the app, and then encouraged our anchors to broadcast brain-computer connected VR content.”

"If Pico doesn't want to, then we can directly promote traffic and let users download the live broadcast software directly. They can't stop users' spontaneous behavior."

After Pico received the reply from Tencent, Zhou Hongwei saw through the viciousness of Tencent at a glance.

We are all thousand-year-old foxes, so we know each other.

He knew exactly what Tencent was thinking: "It's better to have authorization than not to have it."

"What we need to do is not to give Tencent even a little traffic at the official level."

“Geely’s live streaming software can be put on Pico’s platform, but we will not help them promote it.”

"The only way Tencent wants to spread the news among users is to attract traffic."

Zhou Hongwei’s logic is that Tencent only needs to develop a live broadcast platform specifically for VR.

If Tencent wants to promote it on a large scale, it needs to tell users that although they cannot play brain-computer connected VR games such as "Heroes of Doom" with ordinary VR, they can watch the anchor play.

In this way, it can also indirectly help Pico to attract traffic and promote its products.

Zhou Hongwei thought very clearly that it was impossible to stop it even if he wanted to, and it was technically impossible to prevent players from downloading spontaneously.

Then I might as well sign a cooperation agreement but not give you any promotion.

In case the agreement is not signed, after Tencent’s own large-scale promotion, Pico’s users will start to get used to watching VR live broadcasts.

At this time, Tencent will cut off the source of the problem and accuse you of copyright infringement.

At that time, Pico was the only app that couldn’t watch VR live broadcasts. It was very painful to lose something you once had.

This would be a fatal blow to Pico.

Tencent is really capable of doing such a thing.

Therefore, Zhou Hongwei would rather sign the copyright agreement first.

But the problem is that Tencent not only wants to promote their own games, but its main goal is to build a VR live broadcast ecosystem.

Relying on futureverse alone, the domestic holdings are only a few million units.

But if other VR devices are included, VR live streaming can have tens of millions of potential customers.

Other VR devices can also broadcast live, but the live content is not as rich as futureverse.

First create a VR live broadcast ecosystem, and then promote the "Heroes of Doom" e-sports competition.

Ren Yu had already made a tactical plan for this year in his mind.

(End of this chapter)