HTC is continuing to expand their VR virtual reality maps. This time, they turned their attention to an independent VR content development studio in Oakland, USA.
Steel Wool Studios
The studio, named Steel Wool Studios, includes former senior creatives from Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm Studios, and Telltale Game Game Studios. Today it officially announced the completion of its Series A round of financing, which resulted in a total of $5 million. All from HTC.
Steel Wool Studios Team
In the past year, HTC has been expanding its investment in the VR field, especially to help those VR startups. In April of this year, HTC launched the Vive X VR Accelerator Project and raised $10 million as funding to support hardware and software startups in the VR field.
This financing of Steel Wool Studios will be able to increase the number of VR projects it has already developed. According to the studio, they will combine games, simulation technology and narrative techniques to create a composite VR project. "Mars Odyssey" on the Steam platform on September 9th will allow players to experience NASA's NASA Mars probe repair scenario.
Mars Odyssey
According to HTC CEO Wang Xuehong, “We believe that the strength of The Steel Wool Studio will contribute to the extremely cutting-edge content of VR. Other contents being developed by “Mars Odyssey†and the studio show that The Steel Wool With powerful narrative capabilities and surprising visual effects, it will become another powerful driving force for the development of VR market."
Steel Wool Studios was founded in 2011. Previously, the business was mainly to develop 2D narrative games. However, in 2014, the studio's founders visited Valve HQ and experienced the HTC Vive prototype, and decided to move their business to VR virtual reality.