China has a significant internet cafe market with hundreds of millions of people visiting these places to access the internet and play online games. HTC sees an opportunity here to promote the Vive, it’s upcoming virtual reality headset, it wants those hundreds of millions of internet cafe users to experience its VR headset. The company announced a partnership to bring acade-like Vive stations to internet cafes across China at an event where it unveiled the Vive to developers in the People’s Republic.
It was at the event that HTC announced its partnership with ShunWang Technology, which happens to be one of the largest internet cafe software providers in the country. The two companies have collaborated on a pilot program that lets visitors purchase 10 minutes in a special Vive room for about $5, this allows them to experience the VR headset.
“As the biggest Internet café platform service provider in China, ShunWang will make full use of its existing network and operation capacity in the industry to bring the best VR experience to hundreds of millions of Internet café game players,” said Hua Yong, chairman of ShunWang.
It hasn’t been revealed how many internet cafes across China will have these special Vive rooms but ShunWang has been announced as the exclusive partner for this exercise. Its software powers more than 100,000 internet cafes across the country so naturally there’s a big number of people that HTC can pitch its VR headset to through this partnership.
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