[February 08, 2016]

TechnoBlood Partnered with FOVE to Launch a Virtual Reality Experience Platform at Internet Cafes in Japan and South Korea

TechnoBlood, Inc. (Location: Taito, Tokyo; CEO: Sugun Che) has partnered with FOVE, Inc. (Location: Chiyoda, Tokyo; CEO: Yuka Kojima) and provide eye-tracking HMDs for free to internet cafes in Japan and South Korea, to launch a large platform for VR experience.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160208005472/en/

FOVE virtual reality head mount display (Photo: Business Wire)

What is FOVE?
FOVE is the world's most advanced virtual reality head mount display, combining eye tracking technology with head orientation tracking and positional tracking.

Using eyes as an input device, VR user experience is significantly enhanced by:

• Minimizing motion sickness and allowing longer, more comfortable VR experience
• Replicating natural human eye vision by intentionally blurring un-focused peripheral areas
• Enabling natural non-verbal communication with other human or virtual players through eye contact
• Introducing intuitive, accurate, fast UI operations, activated by glance, focus, and blink

In addition, eye-tracking based technology, called Foveated Rendering, can reduce the processing demands for the GPU. By rendering only focused area in high quality while the surrounding areas are processed in lower quality, FOVE can provide users with AAA VR content even on computers with mid-range specifications.

Virtual Reality Experience at Internet Cafe
To distribute FOVE in South Korea, TechnoBlood will collaborate with an affiliated company, N Media Platform Co., LTD (Location: Geumcheon-gu, Seoul, Korea; CEO: Kwon Ho An), which is known for providing internet cafe management solutions in South Korea. This partnership will provide a huge VR content platform that can reach about 25,000,000 users monthly, spanning over 7,000 internet cafes in Japan and Korea.

This project, named Virtual Gate Project, will open the "gate" to the VR world for the general population, making high-end technology more accessible. NetCafe Gate is the first step towards this goal, making FOVE available at internet cafes in Japan and South Korea.

Efficient Content Distribution
TechnoBlood is a provider of ProVision, a content distribution solution with the largest market share in Japanese internet cafes. ProVision is used in over 90% of internet cafes and is currently installed in about 100,000 computers. Similarly, in South Korea, N Media Platform provides content platforms, such as Geto and multiself. Such strong network in both countries will be able to build a strong content distribution platform for VR contents.

VR Industry Background & FOVE Partnership
While the VR industry has been booming, there are still critical problems to make the experience widely available.

1. A high spec computer is required for high-end VR content.
2. VR content distribution is difficult to provide.
3. A certain degree of physical space is needed to enjoy VR content to its full extent.

The partnership between TechnoBlood and FOVE will create a richer VR experience through readily available high-end devices, a wide range of immersive content, and an isolated comfortable space in Japan and South Korea.

Building AAA VR Environment
A high-performance GPU is an indispensable part of building a high-quality VR environment. In an effort to make VR experience enjoyable for users, a partnership with NVIDIA and AMD (News - Alert) has been formed to provide graphics cards, such as GeForce GTX VR Ready and Radeon series with Liquid VR technology, further strengthening the platform.

Developing VR Content for FOVE
In an effort to build a large VR experience platform, following venture capitals are considering active funding to companies that develop VR content for FOVE, especially to the developers participating in the initial stage of this project.

Japan
Colopl Next (Colopl VR Fund)
Tokyo VR Startups Inc. (gumi Inc.)

Korea
Cyber Agent Ventures Korea, Inc
East Gate Partners, LLC

TechnoBlood's gaming content network for internet cafes, FOVE's high-level VR technology, tech support by GPU makers, and financial support for content developers by venture capitalists are all combined to accelerate this project. Virtual Gate Project will make high-quality VR experience accessible to general audience and contribute to the future of VR.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160208005472/en/

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