TikTok's Parent Company, ByteDance, Is Getting Serious About Entering The Virtual Reality Space

JAKARTA - ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is now getting serious about entering the virtual reality (VR) space. As Protocol reports, a source familiar with the situation said that the China-based company plans to invest “a lot of money” in developing VR-related content.

It looks like the majority of ByteDance's investment will go towards recruiting. As Protocol notes, more than 40 job listings have emerged for Pico, the Chinese VR headset maker ByteDance that it acquired last year.

Most of the vacancies were for the west coast-based branches of Pico Studios in California and Washington, ranging from head of VR game strategy to game operations manager. Other open positions show increased focus on Pico's VR hardware, including optical engineer and electrical systems design engineer.

Protocol also pointed to Pico's head of consumer sales lists as a potential indicator that Pico wants to establish its presence in the US. The job description notes that the candidate will be "responsible for the overall sales and marketing of Pico products in the US consumer market."

Pico still has a lot to do, and ByteDance certainly has the bandwidth to give it the boost it needs to compete with the handful of mainstream headsets offered by Meta, HTC, Valve, and PlayStation in the US.

The company's flagship all-in-one headset, the Pico Neo 3 Link, was launched in Europe in May and costs 449 euros.

The specifications are very similar to the 256GB Meta Quest 2 which costs $399 (IDR 5.8 million). This is different from the USD 299 (IDR 4.3 million) variant with 128GB.

Both headsets have the same storage, 1832 x 1920 resolution per eye, and a Snapdragon XR2 chip. The Neo 3 Link, however, comes with an additional headset strap (a $49 accessory sold separately for the Quest 2) and a DisplayPort connection instead of USB-C, which allows for improved image quality when connecting the headset to your PC.

It looks like the Link Neo 3 aims to be an option among people who don't want to spend $999 for the Valve Index or $799 for the HTC Vive Pro 2, but are also looking for something that offers a little more and is best when compared to Meta Quest 2.