On March 10, the HTC Vive Shenzhen Developer Summit was officially opened. When Bao Yongzhe, vice president of Vive Technologies, took office, he emphasized the importance of developers and then officially launched his own application store, Viveport.
As early as December 18, 2015, at the developer summit, HTC disclosed the Viveport project to the outside world. Its philosophy is to "liberate the infinite imagination of mankind from a limited reality."
According to Bao Yongzhe, vice president of technology at HTC Vive, HTC was thinking about the importance of ecology when it started doing Vive. The entire industry ecosystem includes hardware, platforms, content, and business applications.
At the event, Bao Yongzhe delivered a very clear signal to the developer:
We hope that all developers can upload to Viveport after completing their works. Let's discuss together. We will also quickly iterate to make the function more complete.
Viveport has both a PC-side and VR-based user interface, as well as a "dashboard" as the content launcher.
(user interface within VR)
Bao Yongzhe revealed that the following games will appear on Viveport:
In fact, in January this year, some netizens discovered that Viveport is available for download, but installing on a PC requires the SteamVR platform to be pre-installed. SteamVR is a virtual reality app store built by Valve. When HTC started Valve together with Valve, it was SteamVR as the default app store.
Bao Yongzhe specifically mentioned that Viveport and SteamVR platforms do not conflict, and most games will be launched on both platforms. SteamVR focuses primarily on games, and Viveport also has media content and industry applications. In addition, Viveport is mainly aimed at countries that may have restrictions on the SteamVR platform, such as China.
Viveport supports Alipay purchases in China and has a complete review process, including comfort review, content rating review, and technical review.
In addition to the official launch of Viveport, HTC also announced today the first VR Content Grand Prix. Winners' works can be bundled with HTC Vive. The competition will begin on March 15 and will be submitted on April 15.
