Although virtual reality (VR) still seems to be largely in its infancy, it is an industry that HTC seems to be investing in more and more. Which is not that surprising really as HTC has not had the best of times in the mobile space recently and there is still enough time and room in the VR realm to establish itself as one of the leading contributors to this new and evolving field. Likely, one of the reasons as to why Google, Samsung, and a number of other manufacturers, also seem to be investing more time, money and effort into VR.
In terms of HTC, as well as introducing their debut product, the HTC Vive, the company has also already announced and introduced a startup VR program dubbed Vive X. This is a program which looks to help fund and mentor VR-based companies who might struggle without the additional support. Today at the VRLA show which has just kicked off in LA, HTC also announced Viveport. In short, Viveport seems to be a HTC Vive experience app store. Essentially, another avenue where VR customers can pick up more VR content. According to HTC, it will be the “the premier destination to discover, create, connect, watch, and shop in VR”.
While the details are still a little light on the actual content, HTC has confirmed that a beta version of Viveport will become available soon with a view to a wider and general release later in the fall. It seems the main bulk of the content that will be available through Viveport will look to be non-game based content, with a focus on “education, design, art, social, video, music, sports, health, fashion, travel, news, shopping, creativity tools, and more”. Interestingly, while the content will be accessible through Vive headsets, as well as PCs and web browsers, HTC has also confirmed that there will be a mobile app available as well. Although again, details on the actual app, its availability and even its purpose were not discussed during today’s announcement. However, with an expected general release for this fall, it does stand to reason that more details on the mobile app side of HTC’s Viveport will become available sooner rather than later.