HTC might not have a big western developers conference like Oculus does with Connect, but it’s planning a big show for China in just over a weeks’ time.
The Vive Ecosystem Conference 2017 is set to take place from March 27th – 28th in Shenzhen, China. HTC has told UploadVR that it’s planning some new announcements for the show, though we don’t have any specifics just yet. A keynote speech is set to take place on the first date of the show at 9:00 AM GMT+8 where, according to a rough translation of an invitation, the company will “announce new strategic cooperation and the latest initiatives to build the global VR ecosystem.”
Exactly what that means is up for speculation, but HTC is no stranger to strategic alliances in China and the rest of the world; it setup the VR Venture Capital Alliance (VRVCA) to bring together investors to fund VR startups and is working closely with others to establish VR within China. On the ecosystem side, it’s quite possible that we get an update on the new Vive Tracker add-on, which is rolling out to selected developers now and will be on sale soon. Don’t expect big new Vive games and experience to be revealed, then, but there could be some interesting announcements.
The second day of the event looks to be a more educational experience with seminars about the best practices for VR. There will be an experience area too where we’d expect attendees will get hands-on with the latest Vive demos.
We’ve reached out to HTC for more info about the event. We’re not sure if there will be a livestream though, if there is, it’s likely to all be in Chinese. Still, those that like to keep a close eye on the Vive ecosystem will want to pay attention to any news coming out of the event here.
