Behind the explosion of "Pharaoh", "VR Large Space" is becoming the new favorite of offline entertainment | New Trend

Written by Lan Jie  

Edited by Liu Shiwu  

In the just-passed 2024, we intensively experienced the VR large spaces in various parts of the country and found that the VR industry has quietly undergone significant changes.

The transition from small-space personal devices to super-large experience spaces of hundreds of square meters has made VR large spaces, a new form of offline entertainment, become a new choice in addition to offline entertainment scenarios such as script killing, escape rooms, and cinema movies.

In an empty space filled with digital positioning, people put on VR devices, and the surrounding environment turns into Egypt, which is nearly ten thousand kilometers away. Led by the tour guide and the cat god, people walked into the 1:1 restored pyramid and witnessed the funeral of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the making of mummies, and so on.

This is the VR large-space work that was extremely popular last year, "The Disappearing Pharaoh - Horizon of Khufu - Immersive Exploration Experience Exhibition of the Pyramid" (hereinafter referred to as "The Disappearing Pharaoh").

The so-called VR large space refers to an offline entertainment form that combines the immersive space and the traditional VR image content based on the LBE (Location Based Virtual Reality) technology. Compared with the traditional VR image content, VR large spaces can allow players to have more exploration space and interactivity.

And "The Disappearing Pharaoh" was produced by French Excurio, and Boxin Universe is responsible for introducing it as the domestic distribution company. Now it has become a ceiling-level work in the industry and has also become a topic of discussion for many practitioners who have flocked into the industry.

Image Source: "The Disappearing Pharaoh"

As early as June 2022, "The Disappearing Pharaoh" caused an experience craze in Paris, France. In May 2023, it landed in Shanghai for its Asian premiere, and it was extended three times, attracting more than 190,000 people to the experience. Then it was displayed in Beijing, Chengdu, Xi'an, Guangzhou and other places. Until this summer, this work is still as popular as before. Some media reports that the revenue of "The Disappearing Pharaoh" may have exceeded 30 million yuan.

For this work, netizens almost unanimously gave it a high rating. Some consumers said, "It's not that we can't afford to go to Egypt, but 'The Disappearing Pharaoh' is more cost-effective."

Thus, the trend of VR large spaces has thus blown up in China.

The Money on the Trend

Universe Conjecture Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Universe Conjecture") is one of the players who joined the track along with this upsurge.

Wang Meng, vice president of Universe Conjecture, told 36Kr that the company began to pay attention to the VR large-space track around July last year. At the beginning of this year, driven by the popularity of projects such as "The Disappearing Pharaoh", it gradually regarded VR large spaces as the company's key direction. Currently, Universe Conjecture is mainly responsible for content creation.

In the nearly one year since the official project was established, Universe Conjecture has already released two works. One is "Universe Conjecture: Departure", which collaborated with Suzhou Museum in June this year; the other is a project that also landed in June, named "Jungle Exploration I: Return to the Jurassic". Since its launch in June, the former has received more than 60,000 visitors, and the cumulative box office has reached 5 million; the cumulative box office of the latter has exceeded 6 million.

On November 25, Universe Conjecture's third VR large-space project, "The World of Pandas", was also officially released.

There are even earlier entrants who have begun to take shape in terms of scale.

Peng Junxi still remembers the situation when he first experienced the VR large space, and even the details of wearing the equipment are not forgotten. "After experiencing the VR large-space work, it's like you have experienced this story." He used a sentence whose source he can't remember to describe the significance of the VR large space, "The VR experience is to the two-dimensional video as the color film is to the black-and-white film." And such an experience also made Peng Junxi firm in his determination to start a business.

Image Source: "The Disappearing Pharaoh"

2016 was the year when VR became the focus of the market and also gave birth to the first batch of VR large-space players in China. In the following year, Peng Junxi established his own company, named Shenzhen Weixing Space Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Weixing Space").

In 2018, Weixing Space achieved expansion by providing immersive exhibitions for the real estate industry. In 2019, the company began to focus on a longer-term development and started to engage in VR large-space cinemas.

But the epidemic brought all offline business formats to a halt. Peng Junxi thought he could survive it. In 2022, he once expanded the number of VR large spaces under his banner to more than ten. "But the epidemic cycle is much longer than we imagined," and the relevant business had to be suspended.

Fortunately, in 2021, the metaverse became the trend at that time and also became a turning point for Weixing Space at that time. Relying on the existing foundation, Weixing Space reached cooperation with companies such as IKEA and Dah Sing Bank to produce a number of online virtual space projects, thus surviving the winter.

Now, Weixing Space's VR large-space cinemas, including those that are about to be launched, have more than 20, and the expansion will continue. In addition, Peng Junxi informed 36Kr that the company's profit this year can exceed 10 million yuan. And up to now, Weixing Space has only more than 30 members.

On October 25, according to a research report on the media industry released by Huaxin Securities, China's immersive industry, after consolidation from 2020 to 2022, restarted its popularity in 2023 and is expected to reach an industrial scale of 250 billion yuan in 2026.

Weixing Space has also opened a franchise model. According to Peng Junxi, the current franchise stores only need to bear the costs of store rent, equipment purchase, human resources, etc. Excluding the IP authorization fee for the later dividend, the entry threshold can be reduced to about 300,000 yuan, and it is expected to recover the cost in 3 - 6 months. This recovery speed is already close to that of short dramas.

However, Peng Junxi also said that such a low cost and such a fast recovery speed can only be achieved in the bonus period at this stage, and the competition will be more intense in the future.

The Business Model of Content Is King Has Not Been Established

After more than a year of development, the VR large-space industry has now formed a relatively clear industrial chain, including the upstream with content development and hardware production as the core, the midstream mainly for distribution and release, and the downstream providing marketing and offline operation.

Among them, the entry cost of the downstream is relatively low, with the main expenditures being content and hardware equipment procurement, rent, labor, and operation. Since the current VR large spaces are still concentrated in shopping malls or industrial parks in first-tier cities or new first-tier cities, and require an area of several hundred square meters, it is difficult to land and the cost is relatively high. According to industry estimates, under ideal circumstances, the entry cost of the downstream also needs several million yuan.

"The Disappearing Pharaoh" Shanghai Store (Shot by 36Kr)

In contrast, the upstream is a more core existence, and the required cost is also the highest. In the conquest of technology and the update and iteration of equipment, large factories are still the leading ones. According to Sina VR, ByteDance's PICO series occupies 47% of the market share, followed by HTC series and Meta series respectively.

And if the content development is to be of high quality, the price is also not low. Taking the industry ceiling "The Disappearing Pharaoh" as an example, the development time behind it is as long as three years, and the cost is about tens of millions of yuan, similar to the cost of a special effects movie. Correspondingly, the box office of this work is also one of the best in the industry. The monthly revenue during the peak period exceeded 10 million. Some industry insiders said that after the multi-country and multi-city tour exhibition, "The total revenue of the pharaoh is expected to be about 200 million yuan."

In fact, almost all practitioners compare VR large spaces with movies. They believe that content is the most core and crucial issue in this industry.

But the distribution model of the VR large-space industry has not yet been determined.

On the one hand, due to the recovery and growth of the cultural and tourism industry in the past two years, the cultural and tourism industries in various places have also rolled out new business forms. The VR large spaces with novel forms and technological breakthroughs have become one of their options. And Universe Conjecture is developing its business by combining with the local cultural and tourism industry.

Wang Meng said that many tourist attractions now generally have a situation of a single revenue model, and VR large spaces can help solve such problems.

But at the same time, the VR large spaces backed by scenic spots also have the problem of insufficient independence. Few people choose to travel and consume across regions for a single work. In addition, in the non-holiday period, these large-space works that complement the scenic spots also have the problem of a large box office gap.

Image Source: Network

On the other hand, represented by Weixing Space, it wants to take a distribution path similar to that of a cinema chain - so that offline stores can have a reserve of multiple VR large-space works for consumers to choose from; a related work can also be simultaneously released in multiple VR large-space stores to achieve a scale effect.

The cinema chain model is a business model that has been verified by the film industry for a hundred years. It is mature and has a clear chain, ensuring the content supply while also being able to amplify the benefits. But the problem is that the reserve of domestic VR large-space works is far less than the number of movies, and a content-is-king industry model similar to the film industry has not been formed.

Even, there is a certain situation of bad money driving out good money in this industry.

Behind the Money on the Trend Are the Problems on the Trend

But just like every emerging industry, the VR large-space track has mixed in many speculators, producing many works with a development time of only a few months and a cost of only a few hundred thousand or even a hundred thousand or so.

According to the statistics of 36Kr, in just one year of 2024, more than 100 VR large-space contents were launched. However, their launch channels, cooperation models, content types, and experience dimensions are different - except that they all walk with VR headsets, there will be various differences in every other detail.

A consumer who has experienced VR large spaces told 36Kr that he chose to try it out of curiosity about this new form, but after the experience, he felt that the picture was rough, there were many small problems with the equipment debugging, and there was no content creativity at all. Even for the VR large-space works that have received unanimous praise, he has no desire to experience it again, "It's not as good as the games played on the computer."

Peng Junxi also regretfully said that up to now, there are about 200 VR large-space works in China, with serious homogeneity and low content quality. " Almost two years have passed, and when people in the industry discuss good content, there is only the 'pharaoh' case. Few people say that there is a domestic content that can be as good as or surpass the 'pharaoh'."

Peng Junxi believes that the reason why such an industry situation has formed is that the domestic VR large spaces are still in the primary stage and have not yet formed a state of "rolling in content". He believes that the key lies in the circulation of information and content - a large space cannot have only a few works, and it is necessary to give the audience the space to choose and compare.

"Wow! Sanxingdui" Beijing Hopson One Store (Shot by 36Kr)

In addition to the substandard content quality, low repurchase rate and poor independence are also the problems of the VR large spaces at the present stage.

According to the feedback of several consumers who have experienced VR large spaces, almost none of them have the intention or idea to experience it again. VR large spaces are far from becoming a mass entertainment form like movies.

In addition, affected by the recovery of cultural and tourism, local governments are also actively combining cultural and tourism with VR large spaces. But as far as the current situation is concerned, these VR large-space projects have the obvious characteristic of relying on the tourist flow during holidays.

According to Wang Meng's feedback, in July and August this year, the monthly box office of its projects can break through one million yuan, but after the summer vacation, in some third- and fourth-tier cities, the monthly box office low point of these projects has reached 10,000 to 20,000 yuan.

In addition, Wang Meng also said, "The repurchase rate of LBE is very low. Generally, users will watch it once, and at most twice, but almost no one will watch it for the third time."

Inside the Large Space (Shot by 36Kr)

Long before the rise of this VR large space, the VR technology has set off several waves. According to the "White Paper on the Current Situation of VR Experience Stores in China", in 2016, there were more than 3,000 VR offline experience stores nationwide, providing a variety of