There’s no shortage of ideas and projects in the virtual reality space. There are tons of studios popping up all over the world to create immersive content for the platform. With the Oculus, HTC and Sony offerings coming next year, now’s a better time than any to dabble in the space. If only there was money to be raised. Welp, Colopl, a company deeply rooted in mobile gaming, solved that with a newly launched $50M fund.
Here’s what the company said in its release:
After two years of VR research and development, plus dozens of developers assigned to VR game projects, COLOPL created the Colopl VR Fund to provide support for the industry in time for the head-mounted displays to reach the global market in 2016. The Colopl VR Fund is open to funding all VR-related business from hardware to software, including games, video content, development tools, and distribution platforms.
President and CEO of COLOPL, Inc., Naruatsu Baba thinks that virtual reality could be adopted just like PCs, the internet and smartphones:
With the VR market predicted to reach US$30 billion in scale by 2020, VR can be the next most widely-adopted entertainment and communication platform, like PCs, the Internet, and smartphones became. COLOPL seeks to invigorate developers already involved in VR with a best-in-its-class industry-focused fund. This way, we can help VR expand beyond video games into other fields, and ultimately provide new experiences unlike anything human beings have seen before.
While they’re not the first to launch a fund dedicated to VR, Colopl’s fifty million dollar global fund for both hardware and software makers is certainly one of the largest.
Let the virtual games begin.