VR Devices Being Put on the Market One after Another

The HTC Vive, a virtual reality (VR) headset developed by HTC and Valve Corporation, made its official debut on April 5. Earlier in late March, Oculus released its VR device Oculus Rift, too. Sony is planning to release the PlayStation VR in October this year as well. These devices are characterized by being specialized in game content unlike those of Samsung Electronics currently available in South Korea.

According to consulting firm Digi Capital, the global VR market is expected to grow from US$5 billion to US$150 billion in size between this year and 2020. Nevertheless, VR content production in South Korea is showing a slow progress these days. At present, Nexon, NCSOFT and Netmarble Games, which are the three largest game developers in the country, are not working on VR games.

Meanwhile, smaller companies are showing more interest in VR content development. For example, Mgame is planning to launch the Galaxy Commander and the Casino VR in the first and second halves of this year, respectively. The former is a real-time strategy game based on voice recognition and the latter is a VR-based casino game. In addition, the company is going to release the Princess Maker VR in the first half of next year. HanbitSoft is working on five different VR games, too.

Industry experts are advising South Korean companies to be more engaged in VR software development as this year is likely to be a critical period in the development of the VR industry. Game developers are pondering about their content development schedules as well as the consumer demand for VR games still remains at a low level. “VR software development requires prior hardware development,” one of them explained, adding, “It seems that VR content production will be able to become more active after the hardware market becomes larger.”