These past few days, in Rome, PlayStation Italia held a couple of events to show PSVR2 to the Italian press and to a handful of creators.
VR Italia, an online publication which specializes in VR content, and the premier information portal devoted to virtual reality in Italy, was not invited and could not participate.
VR Italia’s role as a news outlet and critical platform hinges on its access to previews of those pieces of hardware and software that – as in PSVR2’s case – will lead to an expansion of VR’s user base and have the potential to be a breaking point for the industry as we know it.
VR Italia, during the course of six years, has been able to gather not only a passionate community of enthusiasts, but a substantial number of viewers who approached the world of virtual reality for the first time thanks to thousands of news items, video reviews, previews, Twitch streams, events and interviews produced by our editors.
Despite the extreme specificity of its content, VR Italia was able to reach hundreds of thousands of individual viewers on Youtube (amassing millions of total views), surpassing every other Italian publication when considering VR-centric content. During events and conferences regarding virtual reality, our Twitch coverage totaled more viewers than any other Italian gaming channel, even those with many more followers and subscribers.
VR Italia’s audience can’t compete numerically with many mainstream publications, but it’s made up of people who consistently buy headsets, consoles, games and apps, and do so while trusting the critical perspective of VR Italia’s creators, who maintained an impartial view on every product they ever reviewed, and who have time and time again shown an unshakeable commitment to a free, well rounded and in-depth coverage of everything VR.
It’s an audience ever curious about the technological and artistic innovations in the industry. They have a strong purchasing power, but they also demand critical and reasoned reporting on the products they are going to spend their money on.
The lack of access to previews for a product such as PSVR2 hurts VR Italia not only in terms of potential reach, but more importantly because it forces us to do a serious disservice to our audience, that same audience that aligns perfectly with the target for basically every VR product.
It bears repeating: it’s not about the views. It’s about, first and foremost, maintaining an integrity gained through years of hard work and dedication. VR Italia has always taken extremely seriously the responsibility of informing gamers through expert analysis, which is essential to preserve the well-being of an industry whose technology still needs to be explained to the masses with both professionalism and enthusiasm.
While we do not doubt in any way, shape or form the professionalism of those who were able to experience PSVR2 early (many of whom we consider friends and all of whom we respect as colleagues), we wanted to take the opportunity to reiterate how meaningful it would have been for us and our audience to add to the invite list the voice of those who – for years – have been covering VR with proven knowledge of the medium and an inextinguishable passion. That voice, in Italy, belongs to VR Italia.
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Link: Gruppo VR-ITALIA
