VR cafe opens in Seoul under hardware-content partnership

Published : Feb 15, 2017 - 16:17 Updated : Feb 15, 2017 - 16:17

A virtual reality cafe opened Wednesday in western Seoul in partnership between a PC manufacturer and VR content provider who are collaborating on a joint project for business expansion.

The cafe, named VRIZ, opened near Hongik University campus that has one of the highest foot traffic in the capital. It will be operated by PC maker Jooyon Tech Co. with YJM Games supplying VR games and other related contents.

(Yonhap)

While there are other VR-focused businesses in major cities that set up shop from latter half of last year, they have not caught on mostly because of lack of content.

VRIZ combines a conventional gaming center charged by the hour, called PC rooms, with two more rooms for VR games. The VR game rooms are equipped with 70-inch monitors and high-quality HTC Vive headsets. The offered games are ones that have been officially licensed, including Raw Data and Kart Chase, both of which drew global popularity on games platform Steam. Operators said they will add seven to eight more games within the first half of this year.

VRIZ will charge 10,000 won ($8.75) per hour and 18,000 won for an hour and a half, slightly more expensive than ordinary PC rooms.Operators said they plan to open cafe branches throughout Seoul, picking locations with high foot traffic. The store planned in southern Seoul is expected to be solely for VR games.

"Our goal is to widely distribute VR by finding killer content for VR cafes, just like Starcraft was a huge hit in PC rooms," Lee Jung-hoon, who handles franchising at Jooyon Tech, said. (Yonhap)