XRDC Diamond Partner Q&A: Viveport's Rikard Steiber has tips for VR devs

This year, the XRDC team is thrilled to be sponsored by Viveport, the leading global platform and app store driven by the HTC Vive VR headset. To make the most out of our partnership with Viveport, we reached out to company president Rikard Steiber to discuss the current state of the VR business under his keen watch. 

For your pleasure, read on to learn about what Steiber thinks developers need to know about the VR Arcade market, and how they can take advantage of new headsets like the Vive Focus! 

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1. Could you please introduce yourself to our attendees, and what your role at Viveport is?
 
My name is Rikard Steiber and I am the president of Viveport. Viveport is HTC Vive’s global platform and app store operating in over 60 countries and is home to the world’s first of its kind VR subscription service.
 
2. What do you think is the best advantage for developers when adding games to the subscription-based Viveport vs individual purchasing platforms for selling their VR products?
 
Viveport Subscription offers numerous benefits and support that helps developers gain more awareness and downloads than just through pay and download alone. To start, Viveport’s paying customers have grown 4x in the last year and the majority of these transactions are through Subscription. In fact, subscribers are 15% more likely to purchase a title than any other customer on Viveport. Subscription can also be viewed as a second-act for titles, allowing developers to find new users to try their content after their initial round of paid downloads begin to slow.
 
In addition, Viveport provides robust marketing support for titles in Subscription, featuring them in our channels like store home page, social, email and more to get their titles in front of VR users. With Oculus Rift now compatible with Viveport and Viveport Subscription, these developers have the potential to reach 2x the audience through Subscription and Viveport’s marketing channels.
 
3. What do developers need to know about the growth of the VR Arcade business in Western markets?
 
Because of the accessibility and social aspect of the experience, location-based VR experiences are growing in popularity and will continue to be an important factor to the growth of the VR industry. Immersive location-based VR experiences, like Mario Kart VR and Dave & Busters’ Jurassic World VR activation, are crucial to VR success by offering a way to connect with the public and provide an opportunity for them try VR for the first time.
 
At Viveport, we offer developers an easy path to deploy their content to hundreds of operators through the Viveport Arcade platform. By distributing their content to arcades, developers gain a new way to monetize their content while acquiring additional exposure and awareness of their title and studio.
 
4. Are there any new kinds of VR Hardware you expect to grow in popularity in the near future that developers can take advantage of?
 
We see standalone headsets, such as the Vive Focus, becoming increasingly popular and key to the evolution to the industry for their portability and the lower barrier to entry. Standalone, all-in-one devices have already started to become prevalent with enterprise and commercial consumers and we will see this trend continue.
 
With Vive Wave, our open platform and toolset that enables easy mobile VR content development and high-performance device optimization, Viveport developers gain a device base extending well beyond Vive hardware. We created Wave to help developers do three important things: reach a broad range of users through multiple devices, create on one platform and deploy broadly for ease and convenience, and explore different ways to help developers monetize their content.
 
Since launch, 15 partners have announced their support with five partner products already running Vive Wave today. Vive Wave offers developers the most options for deploying and monetizing their standalone content.
 
5. What’s one key metric you think VR developers need to keep an eye on when working with Viveport?
 
Realistic expectations are key and developers should think about working with all platforms and stores. We want to partner and work with VR developers to build sustainable businesses and we know Viveport can help them build engaged communities and ultimately earn more revenue. 
 
Viveport prides itself on offering both Vive and Oculus Rift developers the most avenues for monetization. In addition to the Viveport store, we offer monetization opportunities through Subscription, Arcade, our partnership with one of the largest e-commerce stores in the world - Amazon, and access to the China market. This key mission of Viveport differentiates our store and the value that’s added when developers bring their content to Viveport.

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