LBX Collective

Sound Off #80 - Peter Piper gets active, Shooting Sims takeover, and more!

Brandon Willey Season 2 Episode 80

Sponsored by Intercard!

On this week's episode, Kevin Williams and Brandon Willey kick things off with a discussion on the critical importance of guest experience design in entertainment venues and how thoughtful layout, theming, and competition can boost revenue by 30-50% compared to simply clustering machines around power sockets.

• Research shows many operators leave significant money on the table by neglecting guest experience
• Most GMs juggle too many responsibilities to focus adequately on guest experience development
• Legoland Shanghai sets new standards with a hybrid approach between theme park and LBE venue
• Pinstripes filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while keeping 18 facilities operational
• Altitude announces ambitious expansion with 12-15 new active entertainment facilities planned for 2026
• Peter Piper Pizza adds active entertainment zones to 24 locations
• Sega opening a Tokyo store following Shanghai success, expanding IP licensing for attractions
• Shooting simulators becoming the next essential component for competitive socializing venues
• Bumble Bear relaunching Killer Queen arcade with improved onboarding for new players
• Microsoft pivoting toward platform-agnostic gaming through partnerships with Meta, AMD, and Steam

Support the show by subscribing to the Stinger Report and following our various podcasts to stay updated on the latest developments in location-based entertainment.


Speaker 1:

Are you on the edge of your seat Because we're about to SoundOff with Kevin?

Speaker 2:

Williams, covering today's latest trends in location-based entertainment Brought to you by the LBX Collective. Your community to connect, engage and inspire. All right, everyone. Let's buckle up.

Speaker 1:

All right, well, welcome everybody to SoundOff number 80 with Kevin Williams. This is for July 1st 2025. How are you doing, kevin?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing well. How are you doing more?

Speaker 1:

importantly, I'm doing great. I'm back in the office and enjoying some nice dialogue right outside my office door, which is perfect, and so it's great. Yeah, this is awesome Back home. I'm envious Back home, at least. So it's great. Yeah, this is awesome Back home. I'm envious Back home, at least. Yes, back home, and pleasantly. It is below normal weather here, so it is only 105, 102 Fahrenheit, so we're below normal, which is great. Got to love it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're hot England, but not super hot, not as hot as I was expecting it to be, but the next locality I'm going to after this will be even hotter. But anyway, let's not get ahead of ourselves all right.

Speaker 1:

Well then, let's dive in. Let's do some. Change my mind. What are you gonna? What do you got for us today?

Speaker 2:

well, one of the things that I've been involved in is working out the guest experience for a particular client, trying to work out what the client is prepared to spend, what they're prepared to do and what they're really expecting when they cross the threshold.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that scares me a lot, especially from some of the research I've been doing, is I don't think our industry does enough research into what is the guest's expectations from coming into their facility, what they want to do.

Speaker 2:

I pick a picture of a generic entertainment facility or amusement component to a larger entertainment venue and what they've done is they have a number of machines out of their warehouse that have clustered together around power sockets to offer entertainment and that will generate some level of revenue for that facility.

Speaker 2:

But the question is, if they did something different, if they had the driving machines together, if they had competition, if they had even gone for a better layout on the flooring and the signage, could they see an improvement in their revenue by 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 percent? And when you put a gun to the head of some of these operators, especially the GMs at some of these facilities, they do the bare minimum of themality, design and guest experience travel because they are very hard-pressed individuals that have to juggle the bumper cars, the operation, the staffing, the food, the marketing. They have no revenue set aside for a dedicated guest experience application and I'm wondering how much cheddar our industry is laying on the table for other people to consume because we miss out on what we're trying to do, which is to offer entertainment experiences to our guests.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, and we know a lot of the distributors offer some of these services as well. The game floor layouts and I think we know a little bit more detail about this one. It's not necessarily a generic, specific one that we picked out. Some of those who may be a little bit more eagle-eyed might be able to identify what this is, but what I think we'll say is a lot of it also depends on whether or not this is a revenue share opportunity with the distributor or just selling the games and providing a light surface of game layout to try to get the most games crammed into a space as possible, again depending on what the motivation of the distributor is. So if you're a venue looking to drop, to put in a facility like this and add amusements, add redemption, be very careful about the conversations you're having with your distributors when you're making these purchases and determining where this stuff should be.

Speaker 2:

Fundamentally, there's always a lot more going on behind the scenes. With a project like this. It isn't just a clean piece of paper and a big bag of money and away you go. You know there's the availability of the machines, the timing of the opening, the access to the facility, the architecturals, all of those things. But we are in the entertainment industry and we are in a crowded entertainment industry and if you are not prepared to go the extra mile and take the detail and the needed resources to make a special entertainment site, someone else will, and they will come along, eat your lunch and close you down. So I think it's important for our industry, especially in the amusement North American amusement site, to really think about the game experience a lot more than just where you can place machines.

Speaker 1:

Nope, I was muted there for a minute. All right, awesome. Well, we will get back into. So we'll start. We'll kick off, not kick it back in. We'll kick off some trend discussions right here after the break. 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. Let's jump into the trends and we'll deal with the biz first. And the doors have been thrown open for the first public experiences. This happened in May, but I think it's been a gradual process with our friends at Legoland Shanghai, think it's been a gradual process with our friends at lego land shanghai. Lego land shanghai is an amazing venue. From the fly-throughs that I've seen, from the walkthroughs and the videos that have been shared across the internet and through other sources, this is a real tour de france of what type of development you can do when you have a very high level IP branding and a group of individuals that have a lot of experience in the theme park and the resort process.

Speaker 2:

I wouldn't call this a theme park. I would call this an attraction park or an attraction entertainment facility or even an indoor location-based entertainment resort. You know, I would go that far. I think that they have really come up with something that is much more of a hybrid between the theme park and an attraction park and, understanding Shanghai's audience, demographics and the high net worth of many of the people there, they've really gone the extra mile to come up with a very special entertainment facility. I'm not sure again how much Merlin's magic makers were involved in the development of this process, compared to the land operation in Shanghai. That are the owners of this particular franchise. But from what we've seen, it incorporates attractions developed by our friends at Triotech and other European and Canadian developers and North American developers. So it is using all of the toys in the toy box and creating quite a special venue which, once it fully opens in the next couple of days, will be very impressive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean this is. It really is the most impressive Legoland park that we've seen to date. I would love to get there and check it out. You know I am. I do wonder if they kept the audience still the same, like the really core age, which is that 12 and under for Legoland, or if they tried to go for a slightly more elevated audience participation, depending on the attraction mix. I'm actually trying to get to their website right now and the cn is blocked for me, so maybe that's an issue here in my area or something, but anyway. So I can't get to their actual website to see their attraction mix right now, but even the pictures that are posted here, they're really impressive, even the pictures that are posted here.

Speaker 2:

They're really impressive. It is a unique derivation of that. We have a number of Legoland facilities already operational from their theme parks and resorts, but we also have the Legoland Discovery Zones and I think, seeing what they've achieved with Shanghai, they're going to have to really go back to the drawing board and up their game across their North American and Western applications. Positive Pinstripes Some of you will have heard a little bit of us touching upon this in our previous open and shut here. The details are still a little bit vague but Pinstripes had been suffering last year from a downturn in its numbers. In its numbers you know. We have final numbers being reported that they were seeing an operating net loss of about 3.2 million and that they'd seen a 7.7 percent drop in their same store sales. That is quite similar to the 8.3 and some of the other numbers we've seen from the other entertainment venues such as Topgolf and from Dave Buster's. All of those companies had some fats to call back on and to redevelop themselves and to try and address the downturn.

Speaker 2:

It feels that our friends at Pinstripes are not in that comfortable position. So they have started the process to look at Chapter 11 protection. As we record this that hasn't been issued yet and we have reports from the C-suite management that they intend to keep their 18 facilities open during the process of getting their bankruptcy protection. And whatever the future holds, which is either a toss-up between receiving an injection or a refusion of new capital from a new investment operation or being acquired All of those are on the table and as of this moment, it is still unknown how the operation is going to resolve the situation.

Speaker 2:

We have to remember Dave and Buster's has gone through protection. Our friends at Chuck E Cheese went through protection, but most of that was brought on by the impact of COVID and the need to defend themselves against that. I get the feeling that Pstripes had hoped that they wouldn't need to go through that process after COVID and it has finally come and bit them in the bum. That said, they also would be a very choice target for acquisition if someone is prepared to hold their nose regarding the debt that they've incurred.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, this one is frankly, not surprising.

Speaker 1:

From the first time I walked into a pinstripes, I was impressed. I mean, I was impressed by the build, impressed by the food and the drinks, but the entertainment was lacking and and yes, you could eat a little bit while you're playing bocce or where you were playing bowling, but it was really a restaurant with some other, some small entertainment component and that you know. They just didn't market themselves as a restaurant first. Right, they really market themselves as a entertainment venue and we talked about Pins Mechanical on the LBX shows open and shut and talked about the fact that pins mechanical isn't fundamentally different in that in their attraction mix they don't have bocce but they have yard games and so there are very similar. However, pins mechanical is focused very much on being a social element destination with food, where pinstripes the layout is the way their whole build is when you walk in, it's very much like coming into a restaurant. They really focus on the restaurant first and then the entertainment, and I think that is the differentiator between Pins McEvil's success and pinstripes.

Speaker 2:

As the tagline says you know it's bistro bowling and boshi says you know it's bistro bowling and boshi um. If that's your perception, if you are a bistro that may have some bowling and may have some yard games, fantastic. And you know, the last time I was in uh pinstripes having a conversation with a gm in there, you know he was treating the arcade machines, because many of these venues have arcade machines in there.

Speaker 2:

They would just say, oh, the people who supply our vending and maintain our bowling balls have some amusement. We've dropped it in. It was a secondary or even tertiary perception. It didn't really matter what they had. They had a pinball and they had a couple of big buck hunters and maybe something else. That's not an attitude if you are a competitive, socialising entertainment venue to have. Going back to what we were saying about the guest experience, the guest walks through the threshold of this facility and maybe they have gone on to one of the internet services and TripAdvisor has told them of entertainment facilities that have drinks and food in their area and they've picked Pinstripes and they walk through the front door and what they greeted with? They're greeted with the smell of the shoes waiting to be used by the bowling people because some idiot decided to put the uh, the bowling shoe, uh rental component next door to the reception. The particular venue that I was at had that problem. That is just not understanding what you're offering, unless you're into selling cheese. The key component that we need to be mindful of is just because you have entertainment doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to have a social entertainment crowd and seeing a 7.7% decline Last year. It will be interesting to see whoever takes on bringing pinstripes back from the edge how they're going to address what we were talking about right at the beginning of this presentation the guest experience Moving on and some news about growth and our friends Altitude.

Speaker 2:

They have about 100 facilities internationally dotted all over the place. They are an active entertainment facility. They are much more than a trampoline site. Now they have pushed heavily on the active family fun tagline and the operation now has made it clear that they have set their sights on increasing the rollout plans that they have. Their facilities average about 50,000 to 80,000 square. They have a mixture of trampolines, jump, slide, active entertainment not as much amusement as some other active entertainment facilities.

Speaker 2:

But I know that Altitude is now looking at what other components from active entertainment that they can parachute into their operation. So for 2025, we're looking at about four or five new facilities opening up from Missouri to Indiana to Nevada and the rest, opening up from Missouri to Indiana to Nevada and the rest. And then we're talking about in the following year, 2026, they're looking at an opening schedule of between 12 and 15 facilities. That is ambitious, incredibly ambitious. Understanding the competition they'll be going up against. Ambitious, understanding the competition they'll be going up against. You know I can list off about 20 different large scale active entertainment chains European, north America and UAE and Adriatic that are really going to be fighting for that market. But it shows that active entertainment is going to be a battleground that could give competitive socializing a run for its money.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's already such a saturated market. It's remarkable to me that we can continue to see, or at least have aspirations to grow at this scale. They did just announce a couple of days ago a few more than a couple of days ago by the time this was running um they a new director of franchise development, jerek pasgan lorenzo, and he has come on to spearhead this growth right. So he's coming over from shelf genie and kiddo kinetics so not in the entertainment space necessarily, but definitely franchise growth space and you know general active fitness stuff. So Keto Kinetics being active fitness and uh, and yeah, so I mean he's here to help them grow and uh, you know they really need to step on the gas Altitude has been pretty stagnant in their growth over the last few years, while other brands like Urban Air and Skyzone, et cetera and others, have really pushed forward in the U S market especially, and so it'll be interesting to see what Jerick is able to do.

Speaker 2:

Urban Air, of course had some announcements about some investment that they've taken on board to grow their operation. So this is heating up and I wouldn't be surprised if investment money is being thrown at various operations to try and grab the lion's share of the market. Talking about active entertainment and the inclusion into your entertainment mix, peter Piper Pizza if you're not familiar with the chain of Chucky Light entertainment facilities and pizza, they have about 20, sorry, they have about 120 facilities dotted around North America, mainly New Mexico way and Texas.

Speaker 1:

Arizona has a number as well. I grew up going to Peter Piper Pizza right down the street from my house, basically.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's the argument of which pizza is more interesting the Peter Piper or the Chuck E, but anyway, I'm not going to finish on that.

Speaker 2:

The interesting thing is that, like with what we've been talking about with Chucky Cheese recently, the increase in their active entertainment component, their trampoline and gym set up our friends at Peter Piper have also announced that they have added a brand new concept to 24 of their facilities, which are the Peter Piper Player Parks Don't say that when you've had a drink and the issue here is active entertainment in concert with their amusement and entertainment. Their amusement and entertainment, but definitely its own thing, and it is a dedicated component, so not every one of the Peter Piper Pizza entertainment facilities will have this. So this is touching on two levels of investment. Number one, adding a secondary entertainment offering to your operation one entertainment offering to your operation one. Number two, the most important, active entertainment regarding a brand that is seen to be pizza and arcade. Adding that active entertainment component kind of raises the threshold of what you're offering. And number three, staying up with the Joneses. If our friends at Chuck E Cheese is doing this, they'd better be doing this if they want to stay relevant.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, and given the fact that Peter Piper is owned by Chuck E Cheese Entertainment or CEC, chuck E, Cheese is a brand.

Speaker 2:

Cec Entertainment is.

Speaker 1:

Yes, exactly. So it's not surprising to me that, having that, especially with the larger scale rollout that Chuck E Cheese is doing with their fitness zones, that we're seeing a very similar play happening at Peter Piper, although at the same time, I would think if they're wanting to differentiate their brands within CEC Entertainment a little bit, then it seems like they're trying to almost blend them together a little bit more as far as the attraction mix is concerned. So you know, they obviously learned that kids like active play from Chuck E Cheese, so why not take their other brand and implement that as well? But it does decrease the separation between the two.

Speaker 2:

And if you know the square footage that peter pipers have compared to a normal chucky cheese or the modern interpretation of the chucky cheese, you know that not all of these venues have the square footage to be able to drop in this kind of jungle gym enclosure. Again, I'm not sure if cEC is sharing technology of their soft play active entertainment environments with both brands, but it is clear that their thinking is along the same lines, talking about along the same lines and, as we foretold or guessed, wet finger in the air that it wouldn't be long before we'd be hearing about the Sega store that had opened in Shanghai, seeing its mate opening in Tokyo. We had confirmation, a couple of days from recording this or a day from recording this, that the Sega store Tokyo will be throwing its doors open at the end of the year. It's located in a mall area of tokyo where there is already um a badai namco, uh, um large facility, uh, as well as a tato large facility and a capcom.

Speaker 2:

So they're hedging their bets and they're throwing their franchise uh and merch toy store brand into the deep end, uh, to see if they've learned the lessons from the shanghai opening. It's, uh. It's going to be interesting to see when they open the new york I'm going to take the risk and say when they're going to open the new york venue, uh, or the los angeles ready. That'd be interesting. Well, which one of the uh north american American cities would they pick for their next opening? Number three this comes at a time when Sega has really ramped up the energy concerning its IP.

Speaker 2:

We have news breaking that Sega is working with a number of theme park and attraction venues to build e-based attractions based upon their IP. This follows on from the success that they've had with the Sonic movie franchise, and the idea of opening up dedicated experiences based upon this IP just is too attractive not to mix. We've seen this happen with Angry Birds. You know it is an obvious path for them to go down. Though, for Sega, as we saw at IALPA last year, they have been actively looking for people that wanted to license their intellectual properties and brands to place into this sector. So we are now beginning to see the fruits of this.

Speaker 2:

And just on a side note, talking about their amusement facility operation, which is now owned by Genda, but Sega Japan still is active at selling amusement products into the market. They are celebrating the 40th anniversary of their UFO catcher, which is one of the most phenomenally popular of the crane catch-em-all systems UFO, unidentified furry objects collectible systems. That system has underpinned the drive that we're now seeing in the new generation of the new wave of crane machines and it's interesting to see really Grandpa celebrating its anniversary as that aspect of the market explodes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean this, especially given the particular location this is going in in Tokyo. It's not surprising, although it is a little bit surprising that Sega took so long to get here. But you know, we've got Nintendo Tokyo Capcom Store it's. You know they have a Capcom Store and then a Pokemon Center all in the same Shibuya Parko area and so it's really, I think it's interesting that you know Sega is finally catching up at some level here.

Speaker 2:

It's clear that the internal management restructuring at Sega has now focused on their IP and their licensing, and part of being able to do that is to have a physical process, the same way that Nintendo has done that, the same way that Bandai, namco has done that and others. And I wouldn't be surprised in the next year or so that we see a flurry of openings of Sega stores, as well as possibly the announcement of partnerships with other venues towards pushing the brand. With another Sonic film about to be released in the next couple of months I'm not sure if it's this year or next year the next sonic release is due as well as Michael Bay working on a film based on outrun, the arcade classic, sega is definitely in the Sun. They they want to make some hay, moving away from the industry to the trends and the tech of those trends. As I said at the beginning, the physical approach towards the game space that we are creating is essential. An installation that's just gone in in Japan. You know, if you are opening a location-based entertainment facility with amusement components and you can't wow your audience to that level, then you're going to have to seriously think about what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

In the amusement side. It is not just about the amusement machines. It is also about the presence and the atmosphere and the experience that you are offering the audience, and that is really a fundamental example of that kind of level of engagement. Interesting things here. I wonder, if you parachuted this japanese concept directly into a north american facility, if it would be as popular as I would expect it to be. In Japan we have the music games, we have the active entertainment ride-on amusement systems, we have the cranes, we even have interactive darts in this particular facility. It's a question about how we are laying out our operation for our future generation. Are we future-proofing or are we just trying to live off of our previous heyday? Something to consider Moving on and we talked about in Open and Shut, the explosion that we've seen literally in the shooting game sector, where previously I had talked about the explosion of deployments of the augmented reality gamified dart systems.

Speaker 2:

We talked about the explosion investment in the simulator bays for golf systems and also in the racing simulator side, and now the next one on the list is the shooting simulator, racing simulator side, and now the next one on the list is the shooting simulator and a number of the venues that we have been talking about that have been opening in the last few months have incorporated a shooting simulator system in their makeup be that sports shooting or practice weapons training or shooting gallery or even archery as a means to offer a unique skill-based entertainment offering, from the shotgun blasting gamification that we see with clays all the way down to the realistic pistol shooting that we see in Scotland with Point Blank and many other companies in between.

Speaker 2:

The latest entry, hd Golf, well known for their golf simulator bay systems and their ball tracking technology for both consumer and for enterprise application, have now been pushing their shooting simulator system through their sports suite platform. Again, if you're opening a competitive socializing operation, you may be thinking about your augmented reality darts, you may be thinking about your technology-infused mini golf, but now you may have to think alongside your golf simulation base to have a shooting simulation set up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean this is you know, if you watch the open and shut segment from the OBX show just a couple of days ago, it was shooting, shooting, shooting. And so this is definitely, if you're going to have simulator bays, it would be wise to definitely make sure that your simulator bays do have some shooting components, Although I do think the use of the way that you use your shoot, like if you're going to have separate sports bays or golf bays and then separate shooting bays, I think it would be. I think it'd be useful to think about doing those separately versus trying to put everything into a single bay and giving options.

Speaker 2:

I had a number of companies come to me when I was talking about this last year and they say, oh, we do shooting. And I go well, how do I know you do shooting? They go oh well, all we have to do is turn this thing off and move this tray here and then turn this thing on and then we have the shooting. Where's the advertising for that? Oh, we're thinking about that. Where's the pricing? Where's the structure? Where's it in your website?

Speaker 2:

Just because your technology can do two things doesn't mean that you should do that. Dedicating a bay to golf, a bay to football, a bay to shooting might not be effective for you, but if you have a flexible system, you can calculate which are the most popular, at what point in the time and then transfer seamlessly over with the proper signage and the presentation. And also we have two types. We have the shooting at the screen as well as the physical shooting objects the pellets or the BBs or the soft airs. Those things need to be considered because of their tactility, because of the experience, because of the enjoyment, because the enjoyment, uh, that the audience gets out of this. You need to be mindful of what you're offering, but you also need to present to the audience what you're offering or else you're just hiding your light under a bushel one of those interesting uh uh situations where we see a re-release.

Speaker 2:

This was a painful one for me. When I first came across Bumble Bear, they had launched Killer Queen a Well, I saw the 10-player setup of the system originally, but they've created over the years different versions of it. I think the one in the picture here is their five-player setup.

Speaker 1:

I think ultimately, though, just for clarification, it's five on each side right. Yeah so you can do 10, but this is a five on each side, yeah.

Speaker 2:

The first time I saw the machine they just had it connected together and it was 10 players and it was a mad play. But you can cut it down the middle and separate the two. Thank you for the clarification. The issue with this is it's joust. It is joust multiplayer, chaos and confusion playing. It's a very strong audience game with people shouting at each other. It's fun. It is a fun amusement game, but it is out of the box. It is not your standard play game, especially because of the large audience it can attract on playing, but also the audience that it attracts to utilize the system.

Speaker 2:

And when the company first showed this, this was at one of those hackathons and they were thinking about breaking into the amusement market. They had dropped their prototype system into a bar and they were scratching their heads about what they wanted to do. We in the amusement industry advised them that you know this if you're going to release it as an amusement piece, you have to fulfill certain things. You have to have the proper Mars mech, you have to have the proper cabinet construction, you're going to have to go through a distributor. And that was the mistake that we made At that time. We handed this type of product over to distributors with the hope that the distributors would have enough mounts, enough brainpower to see that this was a unique product that needed unique handling and it was going to have to be specially sold into the sector.

Speaker 2:

Well, sadly, the companies that Bumble Beer went to to help them get this into the market didn't really help them as much as they can, because they just didn't understand what they had. They had lightning in the bottle and they just opened the lid and that was that, and the game didn't perform as well as it could do and it became a bit of a hanger queen. Well, the company is relaunching Killer Queen again. They've updated the software. They have learned a lot of lessons about how to get this type of machine into the right audience market. This is much more of a competitive, socializing amusement piece than a conventional FEC amusement piece. They've improved the way that new players can jump on board. They've also made other minor tweaks to the play and to the presentation, and we wish them a lot of luck now returning to the market, dusting themselves off and giving it another go, and look forward to reporting on how many units they can place into the market with this new initiative.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I really do hope that this complimentary tutorial mode does help with the engagement of you know for this game. This game is a lot of fun. Like you said, it is a great social experience. If the players really know how to play, everybody really gets into it. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1:

If they know If they know exactly. And this is this is one of my biggest issues with this game is and this is why I hope this really changes is we talk about in social entertainment having making sure your attractions are accessible. And we don't mean, again, accessible as far as ADA is concerned. We mean accessible as being able to walk up and play. And how quickly can we just get engaged and play with a bowling alley, if we need to, with a bowling lane, we can throw up the bumpers and I can roll down a ball and I'm going to knock over pins and it's going to be a fun experience. We're all going to high five, right? If I walk up to an augmented reality darts and I throw a dart at there and it hits a screen, it's going to be fun. We're going to be able to figure it out and play.

Speaker 1:

This is where, if we're going to have a social entertainment arcade game, need to be able to do very similar things. This is why I really like PlayMind and their PlayBox right, it's very accessible, easy group fun and social interactivity in arcade or redemption component, and so I do hope-. Arcade arena yeah, arcade or no? When we talk about immersive enclosures, certainly arcade arena.

Speaker 1:

You know cubics like those, for sure Jump home play want to do it again Exactly, and so, anyway, if anybody is interested in trying out Killer Queen because I know they're only in 80 venues, or at least 80 units anyway, in circulation this particular picture here is clearly Area 15's Asylum Bar and Arcade. So you can always go and play at Area 15 in their Asylum Bar, can you? Well, the last time we were there it was shut down. So that is very true. Actually, it may be back up and running, but you're right, the last time we were there it was shut down.

Speaker 2:

I hope, in a couple of days' time to be able to report back if that is still operational. But yeah, the picture is from that venue operational. But, um, yeah, the picture is from uh that venue, uh, during we. We really hope that uh, the friends at uh bumble beer are prepared to, you know, take on advice beyond the distributor side for this product, because it it does serve a purpose for this industry. Maybe a partnership with alan one is the best approach that they should go for.

Speaker 1:

But again, I'm not here to give free consultancy and that may compete too closely with their uh, with their avian knights uh game as well.

Speaker 2:

Boohoo sobsaw rounding up, the last part of this is kind of talking about the periphery of the entertainment sector that impacts our industry. So we are in the out-of-home leisure entertainment industry and if you're watching this, hopefully you're watching this for the value of the out-of-home entertainment sector that we're bringing. But we also have to be mindful that we're all part of a larger entertainment industry that includes the music industry and the film industry and the film industry and the consumer games industry. The consumer games industry is going through what could be a major transition of the business. It is a vastly profitable business, as we can see with the vast number of 15 million Switch 2s that have been launched at sale and the business that our friends at Sony do with their PlayStation, as well as our friends at Microsoft with their Xbox division.

Speaker 2:

But there has been on the horizon for some time a change in the way that the consumer video games industry business is working.

Speaker 2:

We've seen the explosion in portables, online gaming and mobile gaming and also the transition away from utilizing console hardware, and Microsoft has decided to implement a new approach to the business where they are less focused on the console and more on the content.

Speaker 2:

They want to be able to have their content available on as many platforms from other companies, not just their own. One of the big announcements that we had this week, as we were recording it, is that our friends at Meta, through their Reality Labs division and their virtual reality headset operation, has decided to release a Xbox-infused limited edition version of their MetaQuest 3S. This is a little bit of history repeating itself. As one of those that's been following the VR sector since the beginning, back in 2016, our friends at Meta, which was then Oculus, had actually released their first headset using a Xbox controller, because at that time, there was still some concern about whether the freestanding virtual reality experience was going to be enough for VR or whether people would be able to get their brains around the concept easier if they were using traditional gamepad controllers. That fell by the wayside and Oculus became part of Meta and.

Speaker 2:

Meta went their own way and painted the units white and focused heavily on VR, until they stopped focusing heavily in VR and now have pivoted into mixed reality and augmented reality. But during that process, the Microsoft relationship has continued and Meta has decided again to release one of their headsets with a gamepad controller. So in virtual reality you can play these Xbox flat screen games or pancake games, depending on what type of nerd you are. You can play these within the virtual environment the same way you can watch movies within the virtual environment with big screen. You will be able to create the world's largest flat screen in your virtual environment and play flat screen games not vr games, but flat screen games. In this system you can also play vr games, but that is not part of the xbox uh offering. This is just flat screen gaming writ large, and it's interesting to see this move. But then it kind of is put into sharp relief of what's happening here.

Speaker 2:

We are seeing Microsoft pivoting away from building hardware and looking more and more and more towards the software and the cloud.

Speaker 2:

Software release games, a service, downloadable, and so xbox is partnered with amd and you will be able to get an xbox pass game pass for your amd card, which means that when you plug in your fantastic pc graphics system, you will have access to the wide selection of Xbox games. There's also a partnership with Xbox and Steam, so you will have access to your Steam accounts as well as our friends at Xbox releasing a partnership with a game deck, mobile game tablet system, a game deck, mobile game tablet system. All of these indicate a transition from hardware to software business. But please understand, we are in the hardware business as physical facilities, bricks and mortar that also has to be mindful about the content that we have in our facilities. So we're at that very interesting juxtaposition in the entertainment market, where a lot of those Venn diagrams that I so like to play around with are now intersecting and where Meta may feel it's better for them to have a partnership with a content provider directly to try and salvage their sales slump across their VR systems.

Speaker 2:

We in the location-based entertainment sector are now fascinated about having partnerships with IP holders towards maximizing our audience potential, as was seen with our discussions about Netflix.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. This is another interesting move by Microsoft. They really talk about in their press release this idea of being platform I'm going to use the term platform agnostic so you could start playing a game on the MetaQuest 3S Xbox edition that's a long thing to say, but it's the MetaQuest 3S Xbox edition and then you can stop playing. But then you can pick up where you left off on your console, so you can actually begin. But then you can pick up where you left off on your console, so you can actually begin, continue your game play on your console.

Speaker 1:

And then you know, maybe you've moved into your room or something where you can continue to play on your PC.

Speaker 1:

You know Xbox on your PC, you know with again, without losing any of your achievements or save data, and so the whole idea is that you're able to just continue through this cloud gaming experience using whatever hardware you decide you want to use at that particular time. Maybe you want your remote and so you want to be able to take your MetaQuest headset with you, versus disconnecting your entire console to go over and play with a friend. So I do think that for at least a period of time, microsoft will continue to manufacture and release consoles. I don't think we've seen the end of console gaming entirely, but I think we will continue to see this move from a single console. You're being tied and tethered to a single console and being platform agnostic to be able to have your gameplay and maybe, if you want the best experience for a particular game, you go to the console or you go to the quest, depending on what type of experience you're looking to have.

Speaker 2:

Or you have four levels of engagement. This isn't the first time that I've been involved with projects where you would start off with the consumer system and then the high-end experience would be supplied by an amusement or a simulator-based system, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see that old chestnut revisited. Where shall we say? I play Halo on my console and then I can play the Halo Simulator at a family entertainment centre, which reloads where I left off on my home game. All of those older bunnies like myself remember the Neo Geo, which the dream had been that you would play at the arcades and then rent the system and take it home and be able to carry on where you left off using your memory card. Well, the memory card isn't needed now, because we have these lifetime cloud based game services. It is just how much the consumer games industry will want to embrace the higher level experience that could be achieved through the location-based entertainment version of their digital experience. That opens up a brand new world of opportunity, though I'm going to get to say I told you so.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I like the idea of the simulator. I've often thought of the model where you have side quests that you maybe do that are only available at a family entertainment center, to earn you specific achievements or get you a certain number of credits or whatever the currency is, the in-game currency by going into the family entertainment center venue, doing that in a unique experience. That then gets you the bit that you can only have in venue and then you go back and continue playing at home.

Speaker 2:

I worked on a project concept for a particular console company where the the example used in the discussion document was think of the death star, those gun emplacements on the death star shooting at uh at the tie fighters and the x-wings as they're flying. Just think of those turrets being manned by people on console gaming systems or on tablet systems while the people in the simulators are flying the TIE Fighters and the X-Wings. That kind of approach to multi-layer interactive entertainment in a seamless, constant game experience Back in the 90s and the noughties, when these were first voiced, was a pipe dream. Now the technology is ubiquitous and we can do that. It's just having the impetus and the right franchise and the right properties and the right venues to actually applicate it.

Speaker 2:

It's not about if this will happen. It's about when this will happen. Anyway, for all of you that want to keep up to date with the latest developments across the sector, hopefully you've subscribed to the Stinger Report and our various podcasts and if you have any questions, you can hit me up. Don't forget, if you're watching this on YouTube, to subscribe. Oh dear, I'm becoming a YouTube subscriber, podcaster. Anyway, is there anything that I've missed off?

Speaker 1:

No, no, I mean, it was a great discussion and I'm already looking forward to the next one.

Speaker 2:

Pleasure is all ours. Speak to you then, cheers, cheers, cheers, cheers.

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