Dena Investment will focus on virtual reality and mobile health in the future

Absrtact: After announcing the exchange of shares with Nintendo a few days ago and jointly developing a gaming platform and a hand tour, DeNA began to walk into the spotlight. But in fact, as one of the biggest social gaming companies in Japan, DeNA can do a lot of action. For example, from the end of 2013 to the present

After announcing a swap with Nintendo a few days ago and jointly developing a gaming platform and a tour of the hands, DeNA began to walk into the spotlight. But in fact, as one of the biggest social gaming companies in Japan, DeNA can do a lot of action. For example, from the end of 2013 to the present, DeNA's investment department has invested 40 companies.

According to foreign media, DeNA investment will focus on virtual reality and mobile health in the future. James Riney, head of the DeNA investment division, said: "There is no doubt that this is something that matches the game, so we want to go deeper." ”

We don't know whether DeNA's focus on virtual reality will be integrated into its collaboration with Nintendo, but Nintendo may have a karez in mind when it moves towards virtual reality. The biggest strategic blunder in the history of the veteran company, which has been respected by the fans, is virtual reality.

In 1995, Nintendo released Virtual Boy, a first VR gaming machine. The Virtual Boy project was led by Jin Ping, the father of a red-and-white machine devoted to the field of gaming that has brought game & Watch, red and white machines and GameBoy to big hot products for Nintendo. However, the Virtual Boy suffered outright failure. The machine, similar in shape to Oculus Rift, offers only coarse black and red monochrome images (with user feedback and headaches and nausea), coupled with the internet conditions at the time, did not provide a battle function (because it is the head machine so others can not watch your game, no sharing), and finally sold only about 1 million. So, the external encounter PS and other new generation of game machine threat, internal and encounter Virtual Boy project failure, Nintendo's share price was quick to suspend, and cross Jin Ping finally resigned.

This is the worst fall in Nintendo's history. Is the game giant going to take the psychological shadow and hit the virtual reality game again? As long as the market matures, of course.

Peter Warman, CEO of Newzoo, a market research firm focused on gaming, believes that the virtual reality that has been being explored since the 90 will grow into a billions of-dollar market in the next few years, with advanced gamers being the main force.

Warman also mentioned that the industry should not be overly optimistic about opportunities in the virtual reality gaming arena. He argues that Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion and that last October's Magic Leap, which financed $2 billion trillion in valuations, shows that the market is overly optimistic about the pace at which virtual reality is growing. "In the long run, these opportunities are overrated in the short term," he said. "Virtual reality is cool, but it's a long-term area and a long-term opportunity," Warman said. ”

And the current virtual reality in the market is not yet ready, most of them are not yet available to the general consumer, only to developers. DeNA's Riney that once these hardware conditions mature, who can provide the first time in the virtual reality platform to play the game, will become a key point of competition.

DeNA has not yet developed its own virtual reality game, but it has tried to develop a "0th protocol" (Kyoto Zero) through a third-party company, which is now the first to experience in the Samsung Gear VR.

DeNA's investment team currently employs 5 people and has offices in Tokyo and San Francisco. Over the past 1.5 years, the team has invested in start-ups spanning media classes to mobile gaming platforms, including gaming social platforms Kamcord, Japanese online wedding services Minnano wedding, e-commerce companies Grow Rich and social news networks Reventive and Nuzzel Wait a minute.

Because the investment is very early start-up companies, the team's investment budget is about 20 million dollars a year. The budget is not high, even if there is a particularly good opportunity to raise it. Riney said,

"We are not Google, we have not made the gun gunpowder." ”