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LBX Collective
Sound Off #77 - Beyond the Spaghetti Moment, Golf Sim Explosion, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
On this week's episode of Sound Off with Kevin Williams, he and Brandon kick things off with the question: are we past the "spaghetti moment" where venues throw various attractions at customers hoping something sticks without truly understanding their audience or how to encourage return visits?
• Many competitive socializing venues are experiencing sales downturns as they face increasing competition
• Companies are expanding rapidly before establishing product-market fit, creating a "musical chairs" situation for prime real estate
• The golf simulator market has exploded with at least 18 different multi-venue brands operating hundreds of locations across multiple regions
• Genda has created VSing, a competitive karaoke concept with audience voting through a smart app
• Meta is expanding its brick-and-mortar presence to showcase VR and AR products
• Lane 7's "5PM Club" targets after-work crowds with special deals on food, drinks, and lane rental
• 501 Fun recently celebrated 501 million plays across 700 venues
• Vesaro partnered with Lamborghini to create stylish racing simulator rigs
• VR companies continue competing for market share with seated VR experiences
Are you on the edge of your seat Because we're about to sound off with Kevin Williams? Covering today's latest trends in location-based entertainment Brought to you by the LBX.
Speaker 2:Collective, your community, to connect, engage and inspire.
Speaker 1:All right, everyone, let's buckle up. Let's buckle up, all right. Well, welcome everybody to another SoundOff with Kevin Williams. This is June 10th, 2035. So, moving our way through the year. How are you doing, kevin? I'm doing well, thank you, and yourself Good. Good, I see you've got the nice London skyline behind you, or at least a sketch of it.
Speaker 2:A representation of it.
Speaker 1:yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely All right. Well, let's dive in. What are we going to do here to change my mind?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm really going to go with the continuation of the spaghetti moment Some individuals made some comments about. They don't really understand how that fits into the description of what's happening in the market, so I thought I would ask the question have we passed the spaghetti moment? You know, is it now set in stone that we understand what the customer wants from his competitive, socializing and social entertainment engagement and, rather than throwing everything at the wall and hoping to have something stick, can we come up with a platform or a package that is guaranteed to make money? You hear my engender in that phrase.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's an underlying skepticism and sarcasm there for sure. No, I mean, we're certainly not past the spaghetti moment. I think at some level, we probably shouldn't ever be past the spaghetti moment when it comes to how we think about entertaining the guests that are coming through our doors and the experiences we're trying to give them. But we certainly with social entertainment. It's still so nascent that we're not past the spaghetti moment by any means.
Speaker 2:I think it is unfair that we should ever consider the spaghetti moment. I am not a fan of just throwing stuff at a wall and finding out the hard way what sticks and what doesn't. I am, by my education and by what I do from the research, hoping that I build a concept based upon what the customer could enjoy and should enjoy, rather than just giving them a schnaugers board of opportunities and praying that something is taken away from that. We have a big problem with entertainment. We don't know our customer as well as we should do.
Speaker 2:I think the restaurant industry, the film cinema industry, even the nightclub industry, understands better their audience, their requirements, their payment levels, the levels of engagement and interest than we in the entertainment. We are still trying to work out who are the ABCs that are coming into these facilities, what they want and, the most important part, how do we get them to come back again. And the spaghetti moment is a mess on the wall. It doesn't encourage them to come back again. I've given in the picture here of the simulator bays for golf or the shuffleboard table for augmented or gamified shuffleboard are just the icing on the cake of really what the main experience should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:First of all also I'll say I don't know who throws spaghetti with sauce on the wall. I like to test my spaghetti without the sauce, but a little less messy there for sure. But anyway, I think the issue I have is that it's okay to do experiments and to try to figure out what works, and especially on a market by market basis. There are going to be certain levels of saturation depending on the type of attraction mix that's already in the market. There's different demographics for each market and so. But the concern I have is when I see a flight club or an electric shuffle or a putt shack or any of these groups that are moving so quickly and scaling up so fast before I feel like in some ways they've really even identified their product market fit, you know, or that they may have a product market fit in the couple of markets that they first tested in, but now they're moving so quickly into other markets. Do they actually have product market fit in those new markets? And that, I think, is maybe the bigger issue around the spaghetti moment.
Speaker 2:Move fast and break things. They're moving too fast to even understand what they can break and what they can keep. I agree the baby in the bath water analogy does seem to be apt with some of these projects where they are just throwing things around. To try and address two problems that many of these sites are facing, we have pointed out already that facilities like Puttshack and facilities like Topgolf, and also pinstripes and others, have been seeing a downturn in their sales and they've been also seeing a downturn in their group attendance to various levels. I personally feel that the problems that they're experiencing are overall problems rather than simple fixes.
Speaker 2:You can't just as our friends at Topgolf are experimenting with at the moment, you can't just drop a Topgolf arcade into your facility and hope that that will address your durational attendance, your retention rates and your spend rates. There's also another issue to bear in mind, which is when these facilities many of the early phase one and phase two competitive socializing venues started, they had no competition. Now there's competition, and not just competition, but competitive socializing competition. So people that have learned on the hard altar of success and failure what works and what doesn't work, they come up with their particular plans. If you were opening, for example, a mini golf, gamified mini golf operation right now, which didn't have a secondary and a tertiary entertainment component to it, you would be up against the wall to try and make yourself stand out from the crowd.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And, by the way, the move fast break things, quote. I mean that's specifically for software development and it's a very different thing to move fast in software where you can make some quick changes and give very low cost, than move fast and break things in an environment where you're spending multiple millions of dollars in physical build outs and things that are just not as easy to quickly make changes to.
Speaker 2:Most of the competitive socializing entertainment facilities are being developed by individuals that have a very strong background in restaurant hospitality and facility management. In restaurant hospitality and facility management, they don't have such a strong background in entertainment machine operation or entertainment experience offerings, and that is clear by some of the changes we've seen, some of the changes that we're seeing at Topgolf, some of the changes we're seeing at Dave Buster's, some of the changes we're seeing at some of the other companies where the board now is understanding that they're going to have to get back to basics, which is entertain. Now, regarding the move fast and break things, yes, that is a term that came originally from the Silicon Valley software side, but sadly it is being applied by all investors now, by all investors now, and part of that move fast is trying to grab the highest amount of real estate before the investment window closes and before the going gets gone, and especially some of the projects that are coming across my table at the moment. It is about world domination. It is about grabbing the largest amount of real estate number of facilities. It is musical chairs. They're waiting for the music to stop and then everybody's going to grab the nearest chair to them and sit down and those people without a chair are going to be left wanting to be cannibalized.
Speaker 2:Our industry beyond competitive socializing but generally in the location-based or out-of-home entertainment market understands that this is a finite resource that we're working with at the moment. There's only so many venues of a certain kind you can open in a certain territory before you run out of customers, punters and people that will come back again and again. So we're at that lovely stage now where we know that this is approved from the formula. It's just now that we've got to roll it out. In other ways you attract the best.
Speaker 1:Yep, Yep, Absolutely All right. Well, after the quick break, when we come back, we're going to dig into the latest trends. Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the amusement industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless systems from Intercard increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, intercard. And let's jump into the economy. Part of our trends and one of the things that we've been alluding to has really come to the surface, and that is that, due to various reasons, the prices of certain machines that have been demonstrated at the end of last year and beginning of this year were looking towards being sold and made available to operators. Those prices have had to go up for various reasons and the availability has been stretched. Two of the machines that we have had reports back saying that their availability dates have been stretched. One of those is the Sega Amusement International, alpha Ops, the virtual reality experience, and the other one is Bandai Namco and Gold Storm Pirates. Now I need to be clear here. This is information that's been passed on to us. It is important to double check, if you've already made orders for these machines with your agent to make sure that the information is accurate. But as far as I understand, those dates that were originally suggested for the machine's availability, which is quite close to where we're recording, this has been stretched into August. But again, this is information that we've had handed to us. I expect other products to also be seeing the stretch in availability and also the increase in price and also the increase in price. But again, it is dependent on what the distributors are doing as well as what the manufacturers are doing, moving on and looking at the biz rather than the economy. And one of the trends that was interesting in our regular Genda feature that seems to be a part of SoundOff and Open and Shut. We've been talking a lot about them.
Speaker 2:Our friends at Genda have rolled out a brand new concept VSing is how I'm interpreting the name. This builds upon a recent deal that the company did with Banban to acquire a number of their karaoke operations and now we are seeing the latest interpretation of what I would call competitive socializing karaoke Multiple levels of interest. Here it is a game. It literally is a game. You have a stage for the performers, you have a very high digital wall experience, high level presentation, audience engagement and it's also using a smart app so the audience can vote on the quality of the karaoke singing.
Speaker 2:This is not the first competitive socialising karaoke concept that we've seen in the market. A number or two in particular were attempted in the UK one in Liverpool, one in London from various companies. They didn't really capture the zeitgeist. Karaoke and bingo are two of those concepts that are currently being fought over to be turned into competitive socializing version two. So often we haven't seen that and for all we know now, uh, maybe our friends at gander have uh managed to capture lightning in a bottle with this new concept, which opens in a couple of weeks time. Uh, I'm not sure when I'm going to be next out in Tokyo, but I'm looking forward to at least sitting through part of this experience.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to be in Tokyo in just a few weeks and I don't know if I'm going to get to a V-Sing. We'll see If I can. And I can get to the V-Sing then that'd be great. But yeah, I mean in the Japanese market. Sure, I think this works. This is.
Speaker 1:This reminds me a little bit of the rising star from on universal orlando's city walk. You know, with the full stage, you know you get the full band and when there's not a full band then there's just a backing track there, but it is on stage. You don't have the voting component of it. At the rising star thing. And I think that's where you know we're looking at competitive socializing.
Speaker 1:Like it begins to feel a little bit less accessible for me than like even a bingo or other competitive socializing. We talk about accessibility in different attractions and V seeing. It's like if I'm going to get up on stage and people are going to be voting on me, I'm going to have to be pretty damn good and like I'm not, I'm going to want to feel pretty confident about it. Either over confident and they're really bad, or really good and feel comfortable getting up on stage and I think like you're there, you're totally fine, just being an audience member. It could be fun. But if you want to get up on stage with the voting, I just feel like it's a totally different animal.
Speaker 2:It's turned it into a game show and there will be the bottle moment. There will be the fear of failure from the audience. You are putting a spotlight literally on the singers and participants. It is an audience, and especially a nation, that enjoys the karaoke experience. Taking it a little larger with this level of audience engagement, though, is an unknown, and we'll look forward to seeing how it will do. I wouldn't be surprised, though, that, if it does find favour, that this will roll very quickly into other territories.
Speaker 2:Moving on and talking about facility business and our friends have the hope that they're now going to be investing more in what we would call bricks and mortar facilities. They opened one store to promote their meta range of VR, ar and social media AI-supported platforms or products. That first facility in California was meant to have been followed some time ago by a number of other stores. That hadn't happened, but now, all of a sudden, with the spurt in sales of their Ray-Ban AR glasses, they're now talking about opening more facilities and have actually started an active hiring process.
Speaker 2:For me, this was very telling that they wanted to follow in the Apple store path of product representation. They didn't want to leave it to normal retailers. They wanted to have a store of their own. That said, meta, and before them Oculus, had created demonstrations for their machines and we had all especially myself, we'd all been sort of pointing and saying you know, why are you running your own demonstration facilities when you have all of these VR arcade facilities that could have been used as mini promotional venues to get people interested in the product? They know what they wanted to do best. They have gone through the ringer. They're now going to roll out more facilities, and it's going to be a toss of a coin whether they are going to be able to roll out enough facilities to entice the customer base to their new platform or if they're going to have to rethink their whole strategy in this sector.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm actually surprised that they didn't start this expansion like years ago, a lot sooner than this, given the, you know, as soon as you move into the hardware game, especially a unique, specialized hardware component, this isn't like a Windows machine that you can just go buy at Costco, right? I mean, yes, can you go buy a MetaQuest at Costco? Sure, maybe you can, I don't know. I've never tried, but, to get people to really try it and experience it, especially people who have not done AR on the Ray-Ban side or done VR on their Oculus or MetaQuest and I hope, because the images you're showing here has some people trying it, but then also has just like the standard that looks very Apple Store-esque. So I'm hoping, though, that they've got some sort of experience component to it so that you can actually experience VR or AR for the first time, if you haven't already.
Speaker 2:Meta now has gone through quite a high level amount of layoffs recently or over the last few months, and now some of the reality is being revealed of what was going on behind the scenes in their decision process, and it is clear that they were badly advised on their path forward, which has now resulted in them having to consider a root and branch redressing of what their business model is. The days of them trying to push their VR machine as well as their augmented reality machine have come to an end and it's now merging the mixed reality with the augmented reality approach, which will make a demonstration area a little bit more complicated to run with. But again, this is more consumer. But the reason I bring this up is because it is another out of home uh application of technology that we need to be mindful of, especially as many of our facilities are rocking uh ar and vr technology and talking about that uh outhome experience, we see another company throwing their hat in the ring to open facilities that offer not just a retail experience but also have some retail attainment, some entertainment component.
Speaker 2:Friends at Sega with their Sega store, following very closely behind what we've seen with our friends at Bandai Namco with their Namco cross-store operation. This is a retail attainment venue that has lots of unique merch and product placement but also has some level of entertainment to increase the dwell time and the experience that the individual has at the venue. And don't be fooled, this is not just a flash in the pan. We will be seeing other companies rolling out retail attainment venues as they want to get some of that bricks and mortar money out there. It is much more beyond just having a well-run, curated web page. It is now about actually touching the customer base that is buying your product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we touched on this a little bit on the open and shut on the LBX show a couple of days ago. But, yeah, I think the big question for me here on how many more venues that they will open up, obviously being in the Mall of America, that's a showcase facility. But is this a licensed concept or is this done directly by the NBA? And I think if it's by the NBA, it may only be one or two or three in flagship locations. If it's a licensed concept, then maybe this is something that that licensee will expand more ubiquitously.
Speaker 2:We'll have to wait and see once we get more information. But it's sounding more and more like it is a franchise agreement through a third party. But again, we're still waiting to get more detail. Interesting one here, one here, um, you know, with the uh, the changing in the habits of the player bases that come to these facilities, we're seeing drives and attempts to encourage more spend, more durational visitation.
Speaker 2:One of our friends, lane seven, who, uh, their boutique bowling experience empire has been driving a lot of the interest in competitive socializing, came up with a new initiative. They came up with the 5pm Club where they're offering unique packages for individuals that come in groups after work to their facilities and they're offering quite interesting meal deals and drinks deals and retention of lane deals all part of what they are proposing as the 5pm club. It also coincides with information that in the UK particularly, people are clocking off earlier from their offices. They're wanting to get away from their offices A little bit of the hangover from working from home. Now that people are being pulled back, kicking and screaming back into the workplace, they're being more mindful of the managing of their time and how they're socializing and I think the competitive socializing business is looking to ride a little bit on that pony.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this is a brilliant idea. The 5pm Club focused on bringing your co-workers. You know, going out with a group of co-workers after work. I mean it's not my style, but I mean going and grabbing a pint after work has been a thing for a long time, whether they're here in the US or whether you're in London. But the idea of doing it together, collectively, with a group of your coworkers or friends at 5 pm hey, let's meet up at Lane 7, let's meet up at the pub I think is a great idea.
Speaker 2:The decimation of the pub business in the UK and the rise of the social entertainment venue is going to feed off of this. As an industry, we need to embrace trying to create times for people to come and enjoy our product. We need to come up with timings for our younger audience, for our mid-scale audience and our older audience. Now, if it takes a five o'clock club to get people to come and regularly visit these types of venues with groups, whatever it takes, it doesn't matter. It's just that we do need, as an industry, to support these type of venues with groups. Whatever it takes, it doesn't matter. It's just that we do need, as an industry, to support these type of things. Moving on and sort of harking back to what I was touching on a couple of sound offs ago regarding the golf sector, someone threw at me the question well, you talk that there's a lot of them out there. Can you just give us an example? Well, here is your example.
Speaker 2:Here is just me grabbing from our database not single venues but multi-venue operations that are offering social golf lounge experiences. And you'll notice, there, along with the onesies and the twos, along with the twosies and the threesies, as it is, we've got the forties, we've got the thirties, we've got the one hundreds, we've got the 117s, we've got the 139. You know we are not looking at just a small blip. You know a non-interesting number of venues that are unique and outliers. We are looking at a serious genre that has a serious number of simulator facilities out there, and I can't believe that these can stay viable unless they come up with new ways to enthuse their audience. And we know that our friends at X-Golf and Five Irons, and especially with Golf X and others, are looking at trying to regenerate and rebrand themselves and come up with much more compelling entertainment offerings, as long as food and hospitality offerings. But that is a serious number of individuals in the market that don't seem to be being represented when we're talking about location-based entertainment as a whole in the industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean for those of you who are just listening I mean Kevin has 18 different brands listed here and again to his point, every one of these brands has multiple locations. We talked about BAC9. I can't remember if it was a sound offer of Open and Shut a few weeks ago. Bac9 is one of the brands listed here and they have actually multiple locations here in the Phoenix area. I've never once seen their logo or seen them in one of the facilities.
Speaker 1:And now, just recently, because I wanted to go for hunting for one of these, I did come across the nearest location to me. It actually was only three miles away from my, from my, from my home, and it's it was. It was in just a shopping center complex with a Chick-fil-A and it was right next to a five below and a dollar tree, so like in a market. That was like kind of surprising next to a New York pizza department and like so just in in a mix of other just shopping center type stuff. So there's nothing exciting about it, um, but it has a five star. It has a 16 reviews, all five stars. Uh, so they're doing something right within that franchise.
Speaker 2:They know their audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but my my point is it is uh, these guys are just tucked in everywhere and they're um, like the little known secret about, uh, you know, one of these these types of venues. They're just hidden everywhere I.
Speaker 2:I think that was part of the, the shock factor from the presentation that people sort of hadn't noticed these things here, were very dismissive of saying, oh, they're not, they're not relevant. And then when you roll the numbers out, they are very relevant. And now that many entertainment facilities are adding simulator bays to their spaghetti, to the mix of facilities that they're offering, they could be secretly receiving competition from other venues that they're not aware about. It is important from the research that I've done. Looking at the simulation bay side, it is two flavors of experience. It is the high simulation side people using them as a replacement to them going down to the golf course and them sharing. You know very detailed training aspects. You know looking at their swing, using the software on many of these simulator bays to help improve their long game and their short game. But also there is the flip side of this, which is the group of individuals going here and having a good time before they either go on to another entertainment or using this as a kind of lounge club experience. Part of this is because the real golf industry has outpriced the, shall we say, the clubhouse experience from the golf game to such a point that it is not attractive to the new wave of golf aficionados and players and hobbyists. We know that the golf industry is going through a major change. We know that it is shaking itself up regarding trying to appeal to a younger audience. The live golf tournaments that we're seeing now being promoted, stuff like that, are all appealing to a younger audience, and I would also say that the simulator bays are part of that revolution Moving on, and just quickly.
Speaker 2:I didn't include this slide back in march and I wanted to include it and now, while I still remember, before it gets disappeared, we've seen a spate of fires at um water parks. Uh, mainly, uh, mainly european and middle east uh, but it's one that bears some watching. I know also that there was an incident in April where a water park had a near major fire outbreak. That was dealt with very quickly. Anyone that's in that business or anyone that is observing the sector needs to be mindful that you better make sure that your fire precaution technology and everything is up to scale, because the last thing we want to do is see a spate of these increasing across our sector.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Looking at the trends and the tech, our friends in the darts sector we were talking about them in a recent sound off well recently um, our friends at 501 were marking the point where they had seen 501 million plays on their machine and they marked that moment.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting that they have their machines in about 700 venues, which is a phenomenal number of venues that are using their augmented, or should I say gamified, darts platform. But it really does show the importance of this market we touched upon it in a previous sound-off the number of venues that have looked towards having darts and darts related entertainment systems as a standout for their competitive socializing elements as well, with our friends at flight club that you know, who have that as their pivotal side, our friends at top golf and fun labs in australia, as well as dave and busters, have all included 501 dart systems. There are other dart systems out there, but I wanted to just pick on this important milestone for 501. We wish them well with that and we know that they have some secret announcements that they're going to be making about the next generation of social entertainment dart systems that they're looking to incorporate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, congratulations to them. But just a quick comment on the fact that they're in top incorporate. Yeah, yeah, congratulations to them. But I will just a quick comment on the fact that they're in top golf in Europe. I'm really surprised we're not seeing them deployed in the top golfs here in the US at this point, and maybe it's because they are in Dave and Buster's. Maybe D&B has exclusivity here in the US in their social base, or at least they did for a period of time. But it feels to me that golf and darts would go somewhat well hand-in-hand. Curious to see how it's doing in Europe. Maybe they're seeing something different, so that's maybe why we're not seeing it here in the US. But it seems like a good addition to Topgolf, more than adding a full-scale pop-stroke-style mini-golf.
Speaker 2:It is clear that the previous management at um top golf uh had certain views about how their entertainment offering was was presented and they wanted to focus on their core uh entertainment uh offering. I think the new management that will be in place, again dependent on how the separation from callaway Golf goes, I think we're bound to see some major changes in the way that these things are presented. And I agree with you wholeheartedly it would be ludicrous to have a captive audience there and not offer them a secondary entertainment that could quite easily be parachuted in like a dart system, looking at other companies with a presence in the location-based entertainment that are upping their game or coming up with new uh interpretations.
Speaker 2:Vasaro are known for their simulators that are in most of the f1 arcade facilities and the company is a race sim rig developer. They make it for the consumer market as well as the commercial, and they've just signed a partnership with Lamborghini where they've produced a brand new version of their simulator, which is inspired by the Lamborghini styling but is also available in a commercial as well as a consumer package. I point to this for those venues that are looking for having something eye-catching as an entertainment activity. Vassara is not the only developer of race simulator rigs, but it is interesting to see that a company like Lamborghini would want to get involved in having a presence in the simulation sector. And who wouldn't be afraid to have a Lamborghini simulator set up in their location-based venue?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for those of you again who are just listening, definitely go and check these things out. These are some slick-looking racing simulators. These are very nice-looking sims. I mean, I'm assuming by Vassaro they're going to have the same type of response and everything else that their others do, and these just look gorgeous.
Speaker 2:I think it's a part marking a future now, especially with the success that our friends at F1 Arcade have engendered, that we're going to be seeing other venues now having to include a simulator lounge components to their mix and I that we're going to be seeing other venues now having to include a simulator lounge component to their mix, and I think we're going to be touching upon at least one new opening in openings and shuts that follows this line In jumping into the VR landscape. And we've seen some shaking up of the market. We've seen some reality checks where the products have to really prove their bankability. One of the most successful products in the VR arcade sector was Virtual Rabbids. It is a warhorse now. That established the idea of the sit-down two-seat motion-based virtual reality unattended entertainment experience. That crown has been lifted by our friends at Raw Thrills with their Godzilla, as well as their Lost World VR two-seat platforms which added gamification, added a level of gaming rather than just being a passive ride experience. And now Ubisoft attempting to take back the mantle. They have partnered again with sorry. Lai Games has partnered with Ubisoft again to come up with Ubisoft's All-Star Blast, which again incorporates the motion seat two-player experience with tethered virtual reality. But they have a game. Now. We have the mounted shooting experience that's on test at the moment. We will get to see that, hopefully before November. I'm hoping that we'll see it in the IALPA Europe, but there is a strong possibility that we may have to wait until IALPA Orlando to get our hands on this. But it kind of shows the war that is still raging within the VR amusement side, though I would say that this kind of battle is much more based on ROI rather than on BLEE. Again, adam will have much more information for us on that once it comes out of the stealth testing mode.
Speaker 2:Going back also to what we touched on in a previous SoundOff about what I like to call shared reality experiences, we're seeing other companies now throwing their hats into the ring regarding offering mass player and mass user virtual reality experiences. Shared reality experiences allow audiences to be immersed together in an environment rather than just, you know, being thrown into a virtual world on their own and Surround. Sync is a company that has now launched a series of what I would call museum or experience exhibits that use immersive technology what they call immersive film exhibitions, and these have started to be rolled out in France as well as in some other countries Again competing in offering bankability. You're not having people in groups of twos or fours or eights, but you're having groups of up to 200 people being pushed into the virtual experience, having quite a long period up to 20 minutes worth of experience and of course, you're able to charge quite a high price for that experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, this is an interesting company in technology. It's a patent pending hardware and software package and I think one of their differentiators here is that obviously you can drop in their packages into new venues or really interesting venues. But I think one of their differentiators here is that obviously you can drop in their packages into new venues or really interesting. But I think one of the big things that they're trying to do is say hey, look, if you have a movie theater already with your seating and with your audio system there, who's sitting in that theater can experience the immersive sound that you'd get from a movie theater, with the rumbling and everything else, but also the very close immersive VR headset as well. So very interesting. Especially, it'd be interesting to see how a movie theater might take transition one of their theaters over to something like this Like they have an IMAX, they have a surround sync facility and then they have maybe some of their other typical theaters.
Speaker 2:The jury's still out whether certain venues are going to cannibalize their space to make available. It's all based on the ROI. If they see the revenue being generated from this, then they'll all rush to do this. I'm banking on this being an interesting concept for many operators.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and I think what's interesting about this one specifically is that it doesn't require them to make any infrastructure changes other than having to add a network, obviously that can support the headsets and buying the headsets. But, like a physical infrastructure change, they don't have to remove seats, they don't have to level their floors and make an immersive theater. They can literally have people come in, sit down in the seats with a headset and experience and have the experience and not make any other changes. So it allows them to experiment without having to do a significant infrastructure change.
Speaker 2:The biggest infrastructural change they have to do is they have to dedicate members of staff to this process. Change they have to do is they have to dedicate members of staff to this process. We've fingers across that this one finds popularity with the core market that they're aiming for. But this is one of many approaches that are what I call shared reality, multiple audience based entertainment experiences. Talking about companies with new concepts that have taken on new investment our friends at dream park many of you will remember to be talking about the shark tank presentation of this augmented reality or sort of mixed reality experience that our friends at two bits circus are also involved with. Well, the company at Dream Park managed to raise $1.1 million in seed funding to help roll out what they're feeling is the downloadable mixed reality theme park concept. Again, you put on a in this particular case they're using MetaQuest 3s you turn them into their mixed reality mode and you're playing a life-size game of Mario, really, where you're interacting with the different objects and picking up the special boxes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the objects look eerily close to Mario, almost like IP-infringing level of close to Mario, but it's not there. Yeah, so definitely.
Speaker 2:I hope that they have made sure the look and feel is distant enough that they're not going to have the monster of Nintendo breathing down their necks. But this new investment will help them now start to roll this concept out and drop it into other venues and, as we were saying about the previous platform being able to be dropped in with no infrastructure changes, here all you need is an empty space of a certain dimension to be able to operate it as an augmented reality or mixed reality entertainment space. Again, I haven't had a chance to try the system. I've only seen the demonstrations and I look forward to reporting back about how compelling this will be as an alternative to, maybe, a more physical entertainment experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the only thing that I would like to see happen here at least before obviously trying to experience myself is just to remove the downloadable word from this. I know that that was a thing for a little while I think it might've been on a few others in the industry as well trying to promote this downloadable theme park concept, but it's not downloadable. Right, like you're just accessing it through the cloud, through the VR headset and like you're experiencing a mixed reality environment, but it's not downloadable. So like, let's not call it that. I like the XR theme park concept. If we want to do that, or XR fun park or dream park, sure, let's go with that. But as an industry, if I could just tell the industry, let's drop the downloadable component.
Speaker 2:Yes, certain individuals wanted to coin the downloadable theme park concept. You're quite right. It is not really applicable to what we're talking about and it also gives the wrong message to the customer base that we're going for An XR theme park. I'll agree with. I'll even go for a micro theme park concept, which was one of the things that our friends at 2-Bit Circus used to push. But anyway, the message is important, so remember the brand needs to also represent that. I was also thinking that 1.1 million was kind of low in what I was perceiving that they would need to roll this out, but I assume the guys have got a serious plan in place that they're going to utilize this funding for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it is low for sure if they're going to roll this out in any sort of aggressive nature. But you know, I think what's interesting about their model is it's like super pop-upy. So, as long as they have permission from the public space that they're going into or the private space, right, as long as they have permission, they really just need a kiosk with some headsets on a rack and then, you know, have the space mapped right. I mean, like, at the end of the day, it's a pretty straightforward, low infrastructure model. I'm not sure, personally, that it's a compelling model I'm going to need to go and try it myself before I turn it down but it is low infrastructure and so, to that end, I guess the 1.1 could probably carry them pretty far.
Speaker 2:Look forward to definitely seeing it at IALPA. I'm sure they'll be there Really, just in the final aspects, just reminding everybody that we have launched the new competitive socializing newsletter and the Sting reports out there. Follow the URL and get your subscription if you haven't already. But I've got a couple issues coming out of both that look a little bit more into what's been happening regarding the latest trade shows that we've had in Asia and the UAE, as well as some new trends that have popped up in the market. Anyway, that's it from me, unless there's anything else you want to touch on, brandon.
Speaker 1:No, another great sound off, as usual, kevin.
Speaker 2:Pleasure is always mine and see you lot later.
