"Junior brother, let me ask you another question first. What do you think of the future development of brain-computer connected VR?"
Lei Jun suddenly mentioned another thing.
Zheng Li said without hesitation: "We must develop in the direction of virtual reality. Brain-computer connection is now a single transmission. In the future, when two-way transmission is achieved, virtual reality will not be far away."
Now it is equivalent to converting only brain nerve signals into electrical signals, but electrical signals cannot be converted into brain nerve signals.
In other words, players cannot perceive taste and smell in the virtual world. Players can only perceive vision, hearing, and a small part of touch.
Half of the five senses are missing.
Lei Jun laughed and applauded: "Hahaha, your business sense is as sharp as mine."
"Yes, the long-term future development direction of brain-computer connected VR is definitely virtual reality, and only virtual reality."
"In the three main industries of Science and Technology Biotech, innovative drugs require long-term planting and waiting for results. Now we can only rely on endorphins."
"As for lithium metal cathode materials, I don't think Kechuang Biotechnology plans to expand horizontally in this field, but only focuses on vertical development based on existing technological advantages."
"The above two development directions are very good. When I started the business, I told you not to be too greedy. You did a good job."
Zheng Li listened quietly. Entrepreneurs who don't like to express are not good entrepreneurs.
Zheng Li positions himself as a mage, and a mage lives in his own world most of the time.
Lei Jun continued: "The development direction with the broadest future is brain-computer connection. This is a technology that can expand to the entire industry."
"It can become the basic technology of future society and be embedded in all aspects of society."
"This is exactly the direction in which Kechuang Biotech is developing brain-computer connections."
“VR, mobile phones, and medical equipment, now brain-computer connection mainly enters these three fields.”
"I'm looking forward to the integration of brain-computer connection and whole-house smart home. It's difficult to find a balance between functionality and portability with current technology."
"The evolution of brain-computer connection VR into true virtual reality must not only be a matter of breakthroughs in brain-computer connection technology, but also include breakthroughs in the entire industry chain."
"At this time, we can only promote breakthroughs in the entire technology industry chain by working together with the country."
"Kechuang Biotech is selling part of its shares this time. Although it is only a small part, in the future we will be able to participate in supporting and participating in the entire industry chain."
Most state-owned investment institutions in China have strong compliance requirements and low risk tolerance.
However, there are also investment institutions that are completely close to market-oriented operations. They have the patience, money and discernment ability to select high-quality technology companies for investment and support.
China's large semiconductor fund has done very well in this regard.
The sales volume of brain-computer connected VR has exceeded one million in the first week. It can be initially estimated that this is an industry with an annual output value of nearly 100 billion and an indirect impact on the ecology of more than 100 billion.
If virtual reality can really be realized, then if most of the upstream and downstream companies in this industry are in China, China will gain a lot.
Virtual reality technology, Zheng Li can use biotechnology to realize virtual reality.
But this requires modification of the human body.
At the same time, these virtual reality products are only personal handicrafts and do not have large-scale industrial production capabilities.
If you want to achieve the virtual reality technology imagined by Blue Star, it is a helmet, and you can enter the second world by wearing it.
If you want to achieve this effect, Zheng Li's technology cannot do it.
This involves technological breakthroughs in many sub-fields, including displays, materials, communications, etc.
The current bandwidth is obviously unable to 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 own name to establish a specialized investment company in the field of VR and participate in investments in the entire industry?"
Lei Jun nodded: "Of course."
"As far as the country is concerned, they are eager for you to participate. You are the top technical expert, and your knowledge in the field of brain-computer connected VR must be the best."
"If you communicate your ideas to the state, they will even let you be the final decision-maker on investment intentions."
"But the workload is obviously not a small amount of work. You have to weigh whether you can handle it."
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 real virtual reality technology come to fruition in his life.
But after getting to know Zheng Li, he changed his view. Zheng Li's existence will greatly promote the progress of related technologies.
Lei Jun planned to go directly to the officials after the news spread before the investment company was established to see if he could get involved.
As for why this kind of investment needs to be jointly conducted with the government level, it is because only the government level can have access to the largest number of related companies.
The information in their hands is the most complete and detailed.
You can't invest in the entire industry chain all by yourself, because there are too many projects to look at, and gold mining in Shali is not so easy.
Zheng Li nodded: "Okay, I will ask Miaomiao to talk to the officials later."
...
Due to the great success of brain-computer connected VR, at least it seems to be successful so far.
Three months have passed, and sales of brain-computer-connected VR have exceeded five million.
This sales volume is enough to support the long-term development of a platform if the positioning of brain-computer connected VR is only a game console device.
Ren Yu also received internal commendation from the Goose Factory for being the first executive to bring up the matter and promote the implementation of the cooperation.
He is already the chief operating officer, and the next higher up is Brother Ma.
Xiao Ma obviously has no intention of taking a back seat so early.
"Pico hopes that we will port "The End of Heroes" to their platform."
After the release of "The End of Heroes", it lived up to Goose Factory's massive investment.
It has become a phenomenon-level online game on the VR platform, and its popularity is comparable to the early League of Legends.
Of course, considering that the holdings of VR and PC are not of the same order of magnitude, the comparison here is only in proportion.
Back then, nine out of ten machines in Internet cafes were playing League of Legends. Now, the same principle applies when brain computers are connected to VR, and nine out of ten machines are playing Doomsday.
Ren Yu was noncommittal: "What conditions can Pico offer?"
Although Goose Factory is the second largest shareholder of Kechuang Future, the ownership of the games lies with Goose Factory itself.
It is not developed and distributed by a joint venture company.
"Pico expressed its willingness to sell some of its shares to us."
Previously, all major domestic Internet giants have made arrangements in the hardware field.
Goose Factory acquired Black Shark Technology, a company specializing in gaming phones. Ali became the only investor in Series C financing of a well-known domestic AR glasses manufacturer.
But Byte was the most aggressive, spending RMB 7 billion to acquire pico. At the same time, it seems to be their most successful work on metaverse concept hardware.
I just didn’t expect that Goose Factory could cooperate with Kechuang Biotechnology and launch epoch-making VR products.
Being willing to sell Pico's shares is a huge blow to Byte.
Zhou Hongwei spent a lot of effort to convince Zhang.
Ren Yu smiled and said: "Zhou Hongwei is really persistent. He still insists on coming to us even though he knows it's impossible."
The fundamental contradiction between Byte and Goose Factory is that everyone’s energy is limited, and every APP wants to seize users’ time.
What Byte has to do is to restrict the software of Goose Factory, and WeChat will just provide its own communication service. Why do it have so many additional functions?
It’s both a circle of friends and a mini program.
Byte-based products occupy users' time, and the traffic that Goose Factory's product matrix can obtain becomes less.
The essential contradiction between the two parties is to seize users' time and traffic.
As early as Q1 of 2022, short videos surpassed instant messaging for the first time in the per capita daily app usage time on the mobile Internet.
This was a landmark event, and the gap between the two sides gradually narrowed subsequently.
The short videos here are not only Byte products, but also Bilibili, Kuaishou, etc.
Therefore, if you calculate the product usage time alone, Goose Factory is still above bytes, but the gap is already very small.
The strategic space of Goose Factory has been greatly squeezed.
Before 2016, if someone said that Goose Factory and Ahli would be fundamentally challenged.
Everyone will think the person who says this is crazy.
But in fact, Goose Factory and Ahli have indeed been leveraging their foundations over the years.
Ahri is even worse than Goosechang. Goosechang only surpasses instant messaging in short videos, rather than the byte system surpassing Goosechang.
Ali's market share has been particularly squeezed by Pinduoduo. Douyin, as a new player, is also engaged in e-commerce, and JD.com is watching eagerly.
New and old players all stared at the meat in Ahri's bowl.
The subordinates heard this and understood: "Then I reject them directly?"
Ren Yu shook his head and said: "Don't reject them in a hurry. I have an idea and I need to sort it out."
"I'll wait until I finish the internal meeting and discuss it before giving feedback to Pico."
Brain-computer connection VR is Goose Factory’s attempt. After the experiment achieves results, it will increase investment.
Under such circumstances, cooperation with Pico is not in line with Goose Factory's style of doing things.
Not to mention that Byte is still the enemy of Goose Factory.
Subordinates have a lot of doubts in their hearts.
At 6:30 in the afternoon, when he was eating in the Gouchang cafeteria, Ren Yu called him over:
"Tell Pico that the operation of "The End of Heroes" is too complicated and the compatibility with their products is too poor."
"But "The End of Heroes" including all VR products of Goose Factory can be broadcast live on the Pico platform."
“Permissions including personal video editing are also simultaneously opened to Byte products.”
It is rare for Goose Factory to be so generous. As early as 2016, when Byte was not as popular as it is now, Goose Factory launched the first round of lawsuits against Byte for copyright infringement.
In the next five years, Goose Factory and Byte filed lawsuits against each other about 40 times in the copyright field.
One of the more well-known cases is that Goose Factory requested that Douyin be banned from spreading the short video of "Honor of Kings".
Including "Anti-Gangster Storm" which was a hit on the entire Internet that year, Goose Factory also requested that all related videos on Douyin be removed from the shelves.
Although Pico is not Douyin, as a company owned by Byte, it is no different from Douyin.
"Mark, I'm curious why you are willing to give Pico permission this time."
Ren Yu said seriously: "It's not for Pico, it's for all VR equipment."
"We will not specifically port it to other ordinary VR, but we need to allow all VR players to see the live broadcast of "The End of Heroes"."
"Not only "Apocalypse", 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 the live broadcasts of VR players connected to brains and computers, there is a high probability that their next product will be Futureverse."
Equivalent to cultivating the market, Pico users can see brain-computer connected VR players live broadcast "The End of Heroes".
When he enjoys watching the live broadcast of this game, he will naturally want to experience it himself.
After discovering that Pico does not support the game, and his financial conditions are enough to support him in purchasing a brain-computer connected VR, the next VR device is Futureverse.
"Our move is called conspiracy. It depends on whether Pico wants traffic or survival space."
Goose Factory's operation will be beneficial to Pico in the short term, but in the long term, Pico is equivalent to turning its own users into potential users of brain-computer-connected VR.
The subordinate thought for a moment and understood the power of this move: "What if Pico doesn't want to?"
Ren Yu: "If you don't want to, just don't want to. It's not their turn to do what we want to do if they don't want to."
"Communicate with our major live broadcast platforms and ask them to develop specialized ordinary VR versions of applications, and then encourage our anchors to live broadcast brain-computer-connected VR content."
"If Pico doesn't want to, then we can directly promote traffic and let users directly download the live broadcast software. They can't stop users' spontaneous behavior."
After Pico received the reply from Goose Factory, Zhou Hongwei saw the viciousness of Goose Factory at a glance.
They are all foxes of thousands of years, no one understands the other.
He knew clearly what Goose Factory had planned: "It is better to have authorization than not."
"What we have to do is not to give Goose Factory even the slightest traffic at the official level."
“Goose Factory’s live broadcast software can be used on Pico’s platform, but we will not help them promote it.”
"Goose Factory wants to spread the news at the user level, and the only way is to divert traffic."
Zhou Hongwei’s logic is that Goose Factory only needs to develop a live broadcast platform specifically for VR.
If Goose Factory wants to promote it vigorously, it needs to tell users that although they cannot play brain-computer connected VR games such as "The End of Heroes" with ordinary VR, they can watch the anchor play it.
In this way, it also indirectly has the effect of helping Pico attract traffic and promote it.
Zhou Hongwei also thought very clearly. If you want to block it, you will definitely not be able to stop it. It is technically impossible to prevent players from spontaneous downloads.
Then I might as well sign a cooperation agreement, but I won’t promote it to you.
In case the agreement is not signed, Pico users become accustomed to watching VR live broadcasts after Goose Factory’s own vigorous promotion.
At this time, the goose factory took another step and said that you had infringed the copyright.
At that time, Pico was the only one who couldn't watch the VR live broadcast. It was very painful to lose what you once had.
This would be a fatal blow to Pico.
Goose Factory can really do this kind of thing.
Therefore, Zhou Hongwei would rather sign the copyright agreement first.
But the problem is that Goose Factory not only wants to promote their own games, but Goose Factory’s main purpose is to develop the ecosystem of VR live broadcast.
Based on Futureverse alone, the domestic holdings are only a few million units.
But including other VR equipment, VR live broadcast can have tens of millions of potential customers.
Other VR devices can also live broadcast, but the live broadcast 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 strategic plan for this year in his mind.
