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HTC Eyes Vive, Samsung Gear VR And Oculus Rift Owners For Own VR App Store Viveport
- Mary Heart , Design & Trend
- Aug, 07, 2016, 11:15 PM
HTC announced on Friday during the VRLA expo in Los Angeles that it is going to release its own VR app store that will cater to Vive owners and "other VR customers."
In light of this announcement, HTC is launching a global developer beta soon, so the Taoyuan, Taiwan-headquartered company is calling for developers to register on the Vive site as soon as possible.
HTC has incorporated a couple of monetization options for developers who will be registering. They can either earn through pay-to-download apps, subscriptions and in-app purchases.
The company has promised that it will only be taking 30 percent of the developers' profits out of the apps they will be making exclusively for the app store, which is called Viveport.
HTC's VR app store is expected to compete against the already established Steam, given that it will be released for mobile and PC platforms.
Furthermore, HTC is going to fill its app store with a wide array of VR apps that are not limited to gaming only.
Some of the categories of Viveport are education, health, creativity tools, art, design music, social, sports, video, travel, news and fashion, TechnoBuffalo has learned.
Speaking of this new venture, HTC senior vice president Rikard Stelber said, "We believe virtual reality is going to change the world."
While Viveport will initially be intended for Vive owners, customers of other virtual reality headsets, such as Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR, will soon be welcome to purchase and download apps from HTC's app store.
"We're currently focused on releasing Viveport for HTC Vive, however our longer-term strategy is to make it an all-encompassing VR content destination, not just HTC Vive," an HTC representative told Digital Spy.
The global launching of Viveport is set to happen this fall, but Stelber already said back in January that HTC does not want to steal the spotlight from Steam. Instead, it would simply serve as "an option for people who cant's use Steam," as quoted by The Verge.
