Virtual Reality continues to remain one of the biggest focus areas for consumer technology companies, be it hardware manufacturers or software publishers. While many companies have already thrown their hats into the VR ring over the past few years, others are continuing to evaluate the sector and waiting for their chance to jump in at the most opportune moment. However, for their ventures to be successful, they’ll need the right partner and the only way that can happen is if companies with proven expertise in hardware manufacturing can team up with companies having the right software development credentials. With collaboration increasingly becoming the name of the game, many tech companies with diverse and often unrelated businesses have been teaming up with one another to deliver what they believe could be the killer product in the sector in the coming years.
Such partnerships have already become fairly common, and Samsung’s alliance with Oculus VR for its Gear VR headsets as well as HTC’s collaboration with Valve Corporation for the HTC Vive are just two of the most well-known examples in the sector. Now it is the turn of another Taiwanese tech firm, Acer Inc. to release a joint statement with Swedish video game publisher, Starbreeze AB, announcing that the two have signed a letter of intent to form a joint venture for the StarVR headset that was originally announced by the Stockholm-based video game company last June at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, California. As part of the newly-inked partnership, the two tech firms are expected to develop, manufacture and market the StarVR headset to the “professional and location-based entertainment market”.
Announcing the tie-up, the respective chief executives of the two companies voiced their satisfaction and expressed their optimism at the development that they believe could one day potentially change the VR landscape as we know it today. Speaking on the collaboration between the two companies, Mr. Bo Andersson Klint, CEO of Starbreeze, said, “We’ve been working with a clear roadmap for our VR strategy from day one, and are now about to realize one of the first major collaborations we set out to achieve”. Meanwhile, according to Mr. Jason Chen, the Corporate President, and CEO of Acer, the company is already “devoting R&D resources across multiple aspects of the VR ecosystem for a coherent and high-quality experience”. The company last month launched a new line of desktop and laptop PCs that it says are fully compatible with StarVR, while Starbreeze showcased its ‘Cockatoo Spritz’ VR film at the Cannes International Film Festival earlier this month.