Trouble may be brewing in the virtual reality industry. Jaunt, a company backed by Disney, focuses all of its attention on immersive media. It now appears the company will liquidate some of its VR assets in the near future. This involves technology and intellectual property alike. It is a big blow tot he VR industry during this troublesome stage.
Jaunt is Liquidating Assets
This news involving Jaunt doesn’t come as a complete surprise. Earlier this year, the firm confirmed it would exit the virtual reality industry altogether. All of its VR-oriented employees would be laid off, and the shift would focus to augmented reality. That latter industry seems to have a lot more appeal to both investors and corporations, whereas VR remains a very niche market.
In wake of that announcement, the Disney-backed firm now mulls liquidating its VR assets. That includes selling off proprietary technology and intellectual property. Exact specifics remain unclear, but it seems the company has no use for anything related to virtual reality any longer.
The bigger question is who will buy these assets moving forward. There hasn’t been any major interest in virtual reality for quite some time now. Variety reports Spinview Global may be a contender for the company’s assets. They still see a lot of potential in virtual reality, despite the lack of mainstream adoption.
It is rather obvious a lot of companies focusing on VR may bite the bullet in the coming months. This industry simply isn’t appealing to consumers or companies, even though there is still sufficient market traction to keep startups afloat. Unless something changes in a major way, that situation will change for the worse fairly quickly.
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