LOS ANGELES — XBIZ, the industry source, is pleased to announce its return to Austin for the 2016 SXSW event, where it will present an executive session on Friday, March 18, entitled “VR Porn: Future is Upon Us, What’s Next?”
The session will examine Virtual Reality’s near to mid-term impact on adult entertainment, and explore ways in which content producers and distributors can meet rising demand for VR content. Also on the agenda is a look at how corporate policy makers will influence the growth and availability of adult VR content along with potential market responses to these challenges.
The panel will discuss VR’s impact on specific adult market segments, and the state of the art in VR porn through a review of current offerings, detailing how these have evolved over the past year, and provide a glimpse at emerging technologies and the outlook for the future.
VR's impact on customer retention and consumers’ emotional connection with the content in context of human relationships, as well as the current parallels and distinctions between mainstream and adult VR, will also be discussed.
Hosted by XBIZ Founder and Publisher Alec Helmy, the panelists include BaDoinkVR’s Dinorah Hernandez, VRTube.xxx Co-Founder Ela Darling, and AliceX.com CEO Fabian Grey.
“With the upcoming release of major headsets such as Oculus Rift, the consensus is that 2016 will be a watershed year for Virtual Reality,” Helmy says, “so we’re very pleased to have the opportunity to once again highlight and explore adult entertainment's important recurring role in driving tech adoption.”
Hernandez explains that BaDoinkVR’s goal is to keep raising the bar and to deliver the highest-quality immersive experience possible.
“As someone who has been on the front lines of this VR revolution, we’ve witnessed significant advancements from content production to consumer adoption,” Hernandez says. “I’m eager to share my experience with others and potentially learn a few things myself.”
Because VR will affect all aspects of adult entertainment, Darling says she looks forward to discussing he ways that it can benefit both performers and producers.
“Virtual Reality production demands an elevated skill set from performers and I would like to find ways to empower the people that enable such immersive experiences,” Darling explains. “We believe that everyone should be able to create compelling, powerful content in this new medium, and we plan to achieve that by democratizing production for performers and giving them the ability to monetize their performance across four different mediums, including producing their own VR porn clips while they webcam in 2D and 3D VR.”
Grey notes the groundswell of interest in VR and the mass of companies entering the field.
“With all these big companies behind VR, I am sure it is a technology too big to fail, and it will define a big portion of the technological progress in the next couple of years,” Grey says. “Adult entertainment will play a big role in the adoption of VR for mainstream consumers and I think we can find a common ground in our panel about which forms of adult entertainment will lead the way, and discuss what the future will hold for us in this area.”
The 2016 session is the latest in a line of presentations by XBIZ at SXSW, with a forward-looking session in 2015 on “The Future of Porn,” which reprised and updated a similar session in 2014, and 2013’s insightful “Selling Free: The Porn Industry’s New Economy.”
According to XBIZ’s Stephen Yagielowicz, the company carefully tailors the content and themes of its SXSW offerings to make the most of this unique opportunity to reach the event’s primarily mainstream audience of techies.
“By raising awareness of the adult industry’s continued role as an early technology adopter, XBIZ hopes to inspire new businesses, entrepreneurs and various other stakeholders to take a look at what this dynamic digital media market segment has to offer — both today, and for the future,” Yagielowicz explains. “Although VR is not the only new technology being explored by the adult industry, it is the hinge pin that will unite augmented reality, haptics, live interactive content, and more — and is by far the single most important new technology for content creators and consumers since the advent of the Internet.”
“VR Porn: Future is Upon Us, What’s Next?” is set for March 18, from 2-3 p.m., in Salon B of the Hilton Austin Downtown Hotel, located at 500 E. 4th St., in Austin, Texas.
For more information, visit SXSW.com.