It’s a double bill of hardware announcements this week with May being a prime launch month. The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition is set to arrive and now it looks like Pico Interactive is gearing up for a launch next month as well. The company has unveiled its new standalone headset, the Pico Neo 3, with a 10th May date slated (for China).
Pico Interactive had previously confirmed the standalone headset was on its way a few weeks ago when it confirmed the completion of a $37.4 million USD Series B+ funding round. For the first time though, images reveal what the Pico Neo 3 will look like as well as unveiling some features.
Spotted by Road to VR, details were released via Pico Interactive’s official Weibo account, noting that the company will be hosting a launch conference on 10th May at the Beijing National Aquatics Center. No specifications have been revealed just yet but the image rendering shows two camera sensors much like the Oculus Quest 2 – presumably, there are four in total – as well as a redesigned controller. As you can see from the image below of the current Pico Neo 2’s, this significantly alters the design so the platform’s inside-out tracking could be improved.
Even with a similar design to Oculus Quest 2, neither company is really competing against the other. Facebook is banned in China so no chance of the Oculus Quest getting into that market. When it comes to consumers Pico Interactive is focused on Asia, only proving B2B solution in Europe and North America.
VR content, on the other hand, is a very different matter. At the end of March came the announcement of its publishing division, Pico Studios, partnering with global developers to bring 6DoF VR videogames to consumers in Asia. This has meant over 400 apps arriving on the Pico Store including SUPERHOT VR, Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs, OhShape, Sairento VR: Untethered, Apex Construct, and Racket: Nx.
“With our Pico Studios division and B and B+ funding rounds, we’re expanding our consumer offerings in Asia and supporting developers by helping with app and game porting, lending out dev kits, supporting app and game localization, setting up servers for multi-player games, providing monetary assistance and delivering SDKs,” said Jessie Zhang, senior director of Pico Studios in a statement.
The way Pico Interactive is going the Neo 3 could very well become Oculus Quest 2’s main challenger and viable alternative for those who don’t like Facebook’s policies, if Pico decides to expand outside of Asia. For further updates on the company, keep reading VRFocus.
