Arowosegbe: People Are Not Ready for VR Tech Yet

Hammed Arowosegbe, Software Engineer and Founder of SwiftXR, a platform that enables anyone who creates augmented and virtual reality solutions, one of the active professionals in the gaming space spoke with the GAMING WEEK team

What’s the story behind SwiftXR? Was it borne out of passion or a desire to solve a problem?

It was more targeted towards a problem coming from the Nigerian and African background where you need to buy something in dollars and the price gap was way too much. So the goal was to see how we can build a platform that speaks to, again, a global problem, but starts from Nigeria and Africa, but then has an affordable pricing structure where Nigerians and Africans can tap into that space, but at a much more affordable and cheaper price.

One would argue that XR is quite new in Africa. I mean, how would you gauge the acceptance and would you see Nigeria and by extension Africa, are we ready for such technology?

 I mean, in terms of readiness, yes, maybe readiness is not yet at the industrial level. Both in terms of entertainment, we’ve seen a lot of stuff. Almost everyone uses Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. And the moment you take pictures with those applications, you’re already using augmented reality in the form of XR. And we have Nigerian artists from Kenny to Olamide to MasterCard, doing a lot of stuff on the space. So I would say, for the entertainment industry, we’ve already seen quite a number of companies and individuals adapt or adopt XR, but it’s a little bit slow in the industries.

Would you say the XR they also have to do the VR headsets considering how expensive they are. Would you say that’s also a contributing factor to the small growth of that application?

 I could argue that it’s not a limitation. The reason being you could get a VR headset for $300. And then you could buy an iPhone for $1,000. Right? And then the average price for a phone is $400. We have a lot of people actually using an iPhone. I mean, Nigeria has been one of the leading countries with the number of iPhones they use, so it’s just about finding that touch point where owning a VR headsets speaks to my problem versus is it a necessity or a want.

Do you offer training in XR?

Yes. I do run training and again, this is one of the core reasons why I established SwiftXR. I mean, if for now people are not ready for VR tech yet, in a way where we can talk to people with their smartphones. So we built a local platform where anyone can share experiences but now via their phone on the web. And we also have to create a programme where you know, we take in people, we just onboard them into the XR space, coming from different industries, from architecture to arts to nursing and get them to use the platform to build stuff. And then at the end of the programme, they come out with various knowledge and understanding about how they could apply this technology in their own industry. 

So overall, it’s been embraced?

 I would say we are, compared to five years ago. It is different to what it is now. I could remember the time I could handpick people who were doing XR in Nigeria. Now you cannot handpick anymore. It’s like almost everyone else knows what it is at this point.

Are there some changes you think are needed in your field?

I think in terms of adoption, you know that we need to see a lot of local companies willing to try it out willing to take that risk to say, you know, this is definitely going to be the tech for the future. Right, but are we willing to try it out for ourselves?

So it’s a leap of faith?

 More like it. There is a use case there but for some reason, we’re just a bit pedantic in that area, where we swore to stick to billboards or stick to old ways of marketing meanwhile we can as well just tap into this new way. It’s even cheaper.