On August 1, overseas technology blogger @TonyVT SkarredGhost released spy photos of the new Pico handle through social media. From the outside, the new Pico handle has changed dramatically, the current shape is more like a fencing handle, and significantly increases the area covered by the hand.
As an industry press, we have used numerous VR grips, and they have similar drawbacks while having much the same shape – extremely tool-like in appearance and use, and prone to collision during intense movement. In contrast, with the leaked spy photos, we can make simple predictions about it based on past experience: 1.
- compared to its predecessor handle should be lighter, smooth lines arc column is beautiful, and a stronger sense of design.
- more ergonomic track design, with a high degree of integration with the limb, the use may be more natural.
- A larger tracking ring will make the interaction more accurate but also prevent collisions between the handles, and the new handle is also likely to join the finger detection function.
Of course, because there is still too little leaked information, the outside world is not yet able to make more predictions. But on the existing information and past news, the new Pico headset and handle should be adapted for the new ecological content, as well as more accurate spatial positioning.
In Sina VR’s view, Pico’s layout after the merger into ByteBeat has far exceeded the imagination of the outside world, and its pattern and efficiency are several positions ahead of its friends if combined with the Pico4 found in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) documents, and the Pico4 Pro version with facial and eye tracking headset traces, plus the PicoVR eye tracking patent exposed last Friday. It’s not hard for us to make a prediction: Pico is about to launch a new product on a global scale. As the industry media, we are as excited about it as you are in front of the screen!
Pico’s overseas layout moves significantly
As reported by Sina.com in March, Pico announced that it has set up a distribution division in North America, Pico Studios, which is dedicated to cooperating extensively with excellent VR developers around the world and introducing quality VR games and applications for its 6DoF platform. According to our understanding, this is the first time that Pico’s overseas distribution division, Pico Studios, has gone from behind the scenes to the front stage, and its main direction is clearly in the content field.
Three months later, foreign media began to report about the Pico Studios team being formed on the west coast of the U.S. by Bytespring, as well as predictions that it would sell C-tier hardware within the U.S. At the same time, Pico’s hiring information in the U.S. was made public as follows.
- more than 40 positions are available in the Bay Area, Seattle and San Diego.
- most positions are related to the Pico Studios division, with specific positions including head of the organization, head of VR game strategy, head of overseas content ecology, and manager of organization operations.
- some technical talent is needed to fill some of the VR software and hardware development positions.
- The job description of Pico’s consumer sales director clearly states: “Responsible for the sales and marketing of Pico’s overall products in the U.S. consumer market”.
In addition, Pico’s actions in Europe should not be underestimated. From the past news, Pico not only launched its latest headset product Pico Neo 3 Link (priced at 450 euros, equivalent to about 3,175 yuan) in May this year, but also officially announced in the official tweet: “We have entered the European VR headset consumer market.”
The Pico that started the globalization campaign
This means that Pico already has the largest number of VR all-in-one users in China. At the same time, Pico’s parent company, Byte Jump, originally planned to set the headset sales volume at 1 million units in 2022, and then raised it to 1.8 million units.
Also in 2021, Pico was merged into ByteDance for billions of RMB, and the deal was by far the largest acquisition in China’s VR industry. After gaining richer capital and a broad platform, Pico also extended its gaze to overseas. Along with the company’s deep plowing in the VR field, both domestic and overseas will become Pico’s stage, and what the majority of users buy may not only be the headset, but also the “early bird ticket” to the next generation of the Internet.
As an industry media, we have no doubt about it.
