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Taiwanese technology firm Acer has upped its stake in the StarVR Corporation freeing their investment partner, Swedish publisher Starbreeze, from the need for further investment. The new deal sees Acer become the majority owner of the corporation.
Under the original deal from 2016, Starbreeze and Acer entered a 50/50 investment agreement to create the StarVR headset and then share associated marketing and sales. However, a new agreement between the two has seen Acer up its interest to 66.7 per cent and inject a further $5 million into the company. This means that Starbreeze has lowered its interest to 33.3 per cent and no longer needs to invest the $7.5 million capital as was originally intended.
As part of the deal, the intellectual property, patents and trademarks relating to the headset and SDK will remain with Starbreeze, however the engineering, both electrical and mechanical, used in the headset will still belong to Acer.
"VR is one of Acer’s key focus areas," said Acer CEO, Jason Chen. The company is also making headsets for the Window’s Mixed Reality platform. "As we continue to make huge strides across hardware, software and content development to unlock its potential. The increase of Acer’s stake in StarVR underlines our commitment to the industry, and we look forward to continuing to deliver best-in-class VR experiences through our successful partnership with Starbreeze and ongoing technological innovation."
"Starbreeze remains fully dedicated to the field of VR where we see great potential in the development of location-based VR that gives users access to premium VR experiences," added Starbreeze CEO, Bo Andersson Klint. "We have pushed design and technical innovation to fruition in our StarVR collaboration with Acer. Starbreeze will continue to push innovation in the headset and focus on its core business – content. Our games and related premium VR experiences will primarily use the StarVR headset for location-based VR centers and we are eager to continue contributing to the success of StarVR."
Starbreeze recently acquired location-based VR company Enterspace VR with the developer’s projects using the StarVR system in out-of-home setups.
