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LBX Collective
Sound Off #84 - Elvis Evolution backlash, Batting Cage 2.0, LED Floors, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
On this week's episode, Kevin Williams and Brandon Willey discuss the evolution of batting cage experiences, questioning whether "Batting Cage 2.0" concepts will succeed in the competitive social entertainment landscape. They explore how accessibility is the critical factor for success, with Home Run Dugout leading the pack by creating more inclusive experiences compared to high-speed options like BatBox.
• Economic pressures building as retailers and restaurants absorb price increases that will eventually hit consumers
• Japanese arcade transition in Akihabara as Genda moves to a new Tokyo location while another chain takes over their iconic space
• Round One announces ambitious expansion from 57 to 200 North American locations in just four years
• Elvis Evolution experience faces backlash for overpromising "holographic" elements that weren't delivered
• Mattel struggling with unclear marketing for their Uno Social Club concept
• Pool House accelerates opening plans and pivots toward possible franchising model
• Golden Tee and Big Buck Hunter championships showcase the esports potential of arcade games
• LED floor technology emerging as an alternative to projection-based interactive floors
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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:Sorry, welcome everybody. To Sound Off with Kevin Williams, number 84. I just had a massive drink malfunction over here. I was trying to get a big chunk of ice just landed into my mug and overflowed everything. I will deal with that in a minute. This is number 84 for July 29th. Kevin, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well.
Speaker 1:I don't have an ice explosion but I'm sure I will have in a couple of minutes. Oh dear, yeah, oh yeah. No, I have no paper towel around at all or anything to do here, but anyway, all that being said, kevin, what are you going to do to change my mind today?
Speaker 2:Well, for all of you that have been following the Open and Shut, you've kind of seen a trend that I've been touching upon, which is we're seeing a lot of sports attainment and there is an argument going forward at the moment that there is a need in the market for a batting cage 2.0. Come to Jesus moment. We're seeing a lot of venues opening this kind of concept. We're seeing developers looking at opening their own unique chains and really is there a need for it? Is there a hunger for it, or is there a danger that you could pick the wrong side of the sports team model to go for?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think if it's implemented well, it has about as much chance of succeeding as a golf sim facility, maybe another social entertainment facility as a single attraction model. I think the guy, as you like to say, our friends over at Home Run Dugout are probably the ones that are executing this the best, primarily because they have a more accessible version of the batting cage, and I think this is really where groups like BatBox, for example, will struggle is they've got that higher speed pitch scenario. Great looking facilities, definitely built around the social entertainment model, but the game is still just not as accessible as something like a home run dugout. That, as we know, is key.
Speaker 2:Accessibility is key to long term viability and success in social entertainment is the accessibility, the ability to allow all types of audience male, female, young, old to actually get experience and gain out of this, the same way that our friends at Flight Club have created the darts experience, where you don't have to be the world's best darts player. I would argue that baseball systems, as well as cricket systems, if they go for the full on batting cage experience using training simulation software that some of these products are based on, they're going to find that they're not as appealing from a social entertainment point of view than from a sports point of view, and sports entertainment may give the wrong mental picture of what the experience is offering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Anyway, time for a word from our sponsors, and you need to get a cloth.
Speaker 1:I've tried to sweep it off as much as possible with my hands. It's now on the floor. You know, whatever, it's just iced tea, so at least it's not going to stain.
Speaker 1:So it's all right. All right, paul Coming up after the quick break, we'll dig into some economic 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 straight into the technology and the trendings and the business and the economy. The economy is playing a part in a lot of people's considerations. We've just seen a number of media services reporting about the US economy feeling the beginning birthing pains of the tariff impact. I think this is really the build-up to the holiday period, the vacation period, and then we have the various national holidays.
Speaker 2:I really do feel that Halloween is going to be a very strong litmus paper of how well the shelves are stocked, but also how much people are paying extra for their foods and their services. And that has an impact across all aspects of the service and entertainment industry. And we're seeing, really, that the fast food industry has come across well the food industry in general, but especially the fast food industry, where they are actually eating a lot of the price hikes. So they don't put their prices up now, but they are looking at a point near the end of the year, maybe in the fourth quarter period, where they will then make the audience feel the full impact of this and at that point I think we will be seeing some very interesting political positioning based upon the price hiking that will take place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that concerns me about not just obviously this is that we keep hearing that these companies, whether it's in QSR, quick serve restaurants, or whether it's in retail or even entertainment we're hearing that they're really trying to hold back on the price hikes, really trying to eat some of that margin themselves.
Speaker 1:We're hearing that from Walmart and Target and trying to do some of this stuff for consumers or to keep them buying. The problem is, they can only do that for so long while either they still have inventory, while they still have some buying power or whatever available to them, and I'm really concerned that we're going to see coming into Q4, potentially even coming into Q1, point where not just one of these things goes up, but that all of them go up and the consumer is hit with increased prices for their fast food, increased prices for their entertainment, increased prices for their consumables and other things that they're buying in retail, and it's all going to come to a head and they're just going to pull back their dollar across the board and we're going to see a major impact because of all of this waiting and waiting and waiting and then this like pressure valve that's released for the retailers and it's going to end up impacting the consumer significantly in overall spend.
Speaker 2:What the market would call the elasticity of the economic situation that we're going for. I think we will feel that rubber band twang in the next few months. Again, not a doom and gloom scenario. This could be still a dodge of a recession or a depression, but it will still be an impact that we need to be mindful of. Going from the economy to the business and some clarification.
Speaker 2:We were talking about the Akihabara closed down, the removal of Genda and the Geico facility there and it's being handed over to a new entertainment operation.
Speaker 2:Well, our sources in Japan have confirmed that the red the very distinctive red hoarding that covered the Akihabara facility will be removed. Red hoarding that covered the Akihabara facility will be removed, that they will be going for a limited restructuring of the inside of the facility, but in the next few months it will be handed over, after the August closure, to another location-based entertainment chain in Japan. And at the same time, our friends at Genda have affirmed that their brand new one of the brand new openings that we touched upon in a recent open and shut their new facility in Tokyo will now become the replacement Akihabara facility. So it will try and take the mantle. So this is lending more and more to the speculation that this was the owner of the facility applying pressure and losing to, you know, called their bluff and Gander just moved into another facility and brought all of their toys with them, and I wouldn't be surprised that this new multi-stage facility that they've just opened suddenly gains a brand new red frontage oh, that would be the, that would be the coup de grace, for sure.
Speaker 1:But uh, you know, do we know anything about what's going into the, the alca harbour building? Because you know the I know one of the things I speculated on, completely unfounded, but speculated that, uh, this is one of those scenarios where the landlord realized they had a really good situation here good location, well known and they decided to come in and put in their own amusement operation.
Speaker 2:So curious if this is a well-known brand that's coming in or if this is something homegrown it is a public public yet, but it is a well-known brand that's coming in, or if this is something homegrown, it is a public brand but it is a well-known chain in Japan. In Tokyo they have about 30 facilities. They are known for their kiddie entertainment as well as their amusement facility and as soon as I can give the name, we will give that name. I think it'd be best to wait until August when the GEICO brand is pulled down and the new branding goes up. But it isn't what I was thinking, that the operator was getting super greedy and we're going to create their own unique brands. They will be parachuting in a known company. How that relationship will work in these current conditions we'll have to wait and see An interesting one here.
Speaker 2:You know, round one is a well-known Japanese bowling and entertainment chain, but obviously they have their US representation 57 facilities in North America offering their unique style of bowling, ping pong, amusement and Japanese stylings and the type of food that you'd run a mile to avoid. I'm sorry. The issue is now that they have been dabbling. They've had very strong success in Japan with site-on-site sale increases and they have doubled down. They have made it clear now to the markets that from their 57 facilities.
Speaker 2:They're expecting, in the next four years, to open or have an operation that will have 200 facilities. That is really digging their flag into the ground and saying that they're going to go up. This will be much more than their biggest competitor, which would be Dave Buster's at the moment, with currently 170-plus facilities. Four years is going to be an ongoing battle between the brands and again, though it's interesting to see these operations you know making these forceful declarations, as we were talking last SoundOff about some of the operations that have done that, it's still very concerning whether they're going to actually achieve these or if we're going to hit a saturation so hard that we'll go through the buffers.
Speaker 1:I mean, look, 200 round one facilities. The US is a big market, there are lots of very large cities, but to fit 200 round one facilities mixed in with everything else that already exists here, all of the other brands, not just a D&B or a main event, but any of the other brands that have a bowling anchored and amusement anchored, mix, attraction mix, to do 200 and to do them well, to make sure that they're profitable, you have to open up one per week practically for the next four years in order to meet those numbers. That seems to be almost fantastical and, like somebody is not quite done the math to figure out, you have to open up one of these per week. I mean from leasing negotiations to obviously getting the equipment here doing the build outs.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a significant lift for any brand, especially one that is not headquartered here in the us I am concerned that an executive C-suite may have gone for a strident statement rather than a measured business announcement. Again, I'm prepared to give them the latitude because of the success that our friends have achieved in their home territory, and we also have to wait and see what the round one food experience is going to be like when they open that. But at this moment in time I am getting that funny location based entertainment feeling from the 1990s where we're seeing a lot of hype but we need to see a lot of revenue. Talking about needing to prove and I was lucky enough to attend the opening of the Elvis Evolution experience this is what I like to call an immersive theatrical experience, building very much on what we've seen with the ABBA experience, as well as some of the immersive uh exhibition, the monet projection experiences and stuff like this. Um led reality is a known entity. They developed the war of the worlds experience in london as well as the gunpowder plot experience, where those experiences were a mixture of live actors, immersive projection and virtual reality. The Elvis Evolution experience is heavily surrounded by live actors and performers and projection experience. Projection experience it is a very ballsy move by Laird Reality. Taking on the Elvis IP cannot be cheap and creating an immersive experience to this level cannot be cheap.
Speaker 2:But also, in promoting their experience, they may have painted themselves in a corner because the expectations from the audience, who are very loyal to Elvis but also are very familiar with the ABBA experience, may not have been matched by what was actually delivered. I'm not going to share the photographs I have of the actual experience itself because we were asked by the organizers not to, but I can say that it is not holographic, but it is based upon projection mapping. We've seen this before with a number of experiences and in particular, the Elvis experience didn't have a holographic Elvis, it just incorporated the live performance within a recreation of Elvis' famous 1970 performance at Palms. And you know managing expectations, many of you will remember this was one of the means that I started, which is managing the guest experience, and I was building that mean based upon a number of occasions where I had been led to believe that we were going to get one thing and what was delivered was another thing. And sadly, I think the Elvis experience is one of those where they're already seeing the backlash of over-promising and under-delivering here. The performances from the live actors is fantastic. The quality of the experiences is fantastic, but when people are expecting to see a holographic Elvis Presley, then you better manage their expectations that they're not going to get there.
Speaker 2:And we've already seen the media covering reports such as misleading and sham, uh, shambles, uh, from start to finish, being the comments that some of the uh early, uh, you know, post trip advisor comments are doing. If you can't put a lid on that, you've got a problem on your head. You've got a wonka moment uh facing you here, and the interesting part about where this elvis facility or experience is uh deployed first is at the uh lN, the London oh, I forget London Docklands Nexus or network. Anyway, it's an immersive hub and we have the Friends experience. This was where the Jurassic World experience was. This is where the Netflix is going to actually be opening a Squid Games experience. So people within this environment are used to seeing what immersive entertainment has to offer and having a couple of rooms especially themed performance of music and then an end level performance that doesn't have as high a level of immersion as some were expecting could be a problem, and we will be watching very closely how our friends at live reality manage a media moment yeah, I mean this is.
Speaker 1:Look, this is you. You went there. You said the the live actors were great. The overall experience, the layout, the other aspects of the experience was good, and I think they could have delivered on a very great, solid Elvis experience had they just called it maybe the Elvis experience versus Elvis evolution and they hadn't promoted it as this holographic concert going experience with all this extra stuff. I mean, I know the tickets ranged from 75 to 300 pounds, right, depending on the level of package that you, that you purchased, and so when you again it comes down to those expectations and it starts even with the name of the.
Speaker 1:It starts even with the name of the. Oh, I've disappeared there for a second. All right, elvis AI and you know, or try to bring an AI into making more of like an evolved Elvis. That is a lot more like the ABBA scenario, the ABBA experience, and they just used some light AI touch-ups to the video-based experience and that was really it, and so I think that is where they really have significant problems. It wasn't an evolution of Elvis, it was just a really solid Elvis experience and that's the way they should have just marketed it.
Speaker 2:How they're going to put the genie back in the bottle is going to be very interesting. How they're going to put the genie back in the bottle is going to be very interesting. How they're going to manage those expectations, how they're going to address this, especially as we're at the beginning of the process, is going to be something that we will watch very closely. We definitely want to avoid a Mr Beast moment and we definitely want to avoid a Willy Wonka experience. But again, speaking personally, I think that they generated a fantastic live experience with an immersive element though they may have overpromised Talking about overpromising and having to manage a situation. We also now to uh the mattel situation with their evo. So you know social club um, they have been dealing with bad media, uh, where they have over promised and under delivered.
Speaker 2:We had commented, uh, at the previous sound off as well as the open and shut, that their marketing was confusing, to say the least, and that they hadn't actually described clearly what was happening.
Speaker 2:And when you leave vagaries to the media, especially social media, then people will fill the gaps up themselves. And people thought that this was going to be uno table game gambling next door to your craps and your poker, and all of that. And now you know Mattel has had to do damage limitations, telling people, no, you won't be able to gamble playing Uno, this is just a social entertainment component as part of the Palms, and they're still fighting. This now has brought the a team of their marketing to try and clear up the situation. Mattel is brought their a team, uh, to the table to try and clear up the situation at the beginning, uh, rather than halfway through, and with the los angeles, new york and chicago facilities soon to be opening as pop-ups this year in the next couple of months from when we're recording this, they'd really better get their game sorted out, because they're leaving a bad taste and getting a little bit of a black eye from not managing this situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I've said from the very beginning that I liked the concept of a social club, I think as a potential pop-up to see, test the experience. But marketing and the press releases were not clear at all and we kept trying to guess, even on this show, but whether or not this was actually on the floor with meant by a suite. Did they mean actually in one of their suites? Turns out that's apparently what they actually meant. Um, you know, we were trying to figure out their terminology because it was not clear at all. And you know, again, follow on from the previous discussion we just had, you've got to be clear in your marketing and your expectations with these things when I did the meme saying managing the expectations of the guest, I wasn't playing around.
Speaker 2:When you get bitten this hard by poor management of the guest experience, then sometimes you can't bounce back from that Talking about managing guest experience and fighting quickly to establish yourselves. The team behind the Puttshack concept, as well as the Flight Club concept, have been working on Pool House. We've talked about this before Projection-mapped pool with a social entertainment element. The first facility of this was scheduled to open next year. I've now been informed that they've moved up the opening plans for the first facility. They're going to have about 20 pool tables with this projection mapping system. We have a video now of what that experience looks like. It is pool with assist.
Speaker 2:We now heard the magic word AI, or the term AI used, saying that some of this experience will be created supported by AI. And we have a soup to nuts process. You go in, you register, you take your table, you order your drinks, you order your drinks, you register the players, you play the game. The game is modified depending on the skills, either using augmented or scoring capabilities. All of this has just well.
Speaker 2:All of this had already received $34 million to roll out. The first facility was developed in a very swanky part of London which will be throwing its doors open in now a matter of months' time rather than next year, and they've just received a seed investment, an additional investment of $1.5 million, investment of 1.5 million. Now it is interesting to see that the original idea of this being a rollout like Putshack, where there would be a number of facilities dotted around the country as well as in North America and beyond, has migrated slightly to this investment, helping not just with opening their own facilities but also franchising the facilities and the tech. And I'm wondering now if the very smart individuals behind this concept can see the writing on the wall regarding the social entertainment and entertainment market and maybe pivoting towards what we've been talking about, of trying to get their concepts not just in its own single entertainment venues but also parachuting it in like 501 as an addition to existing facilities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean this very much seems like. I sure hope that's the case because you know we've talked about the. We almost continue to beat this dead horse about single attraction social entertainment models. Flight Club seems to be doing moderately well. We don't have, obviously, numbers because they're privately held. Same thing with Putschack, same situation.
Speaker 1:But this one really has me concerned because while pool is popular and while it is a social experience, it is also a historically pub bar type game and not something that most people go out and play socially in that type of thing. Now you can say the same thing about darts that has historically been the case, or even shuffleboard. So we're seeing the reemergence of some of these games that have now been gamified in more accessible ways coming out into these types of concepts. I really liked the idea of them taking this almost conductor style or game vault style, where they've created this product and now they're saying, hey, take this product and drop it in to a facility that has multiple bar style games a shuffleboard, a pool, darts and now we've got a really vibrant social entertainment space and not just a singular attraction it will be interesting to see from the investor's point of view whether they will be able to swallow the pill of it being a component to other people's facilities or, if they were sold on, their investment was going into their own dedicated location.
Speaker 2:I thought the pool house was a poor branding choice. Personal opinion I'm sure they had very highly paid individuals involved in the branding process, because if they do roll this concept out as a addition or adjunct to other facilities, they're going to have to come up with another name. Moving on, and the big money is in tournament play. And our friends at Incredible Technologies had another successful Golden Tee World Championship Took place at the Palms Casino Resort. Everybody fighting for a prize pool of 200,000. Really good coverage, really good atmosphere.
Speaker 2:This is a fixture, and this fixture is mirrored by the success that our friends at Raw Thrills have with their Big Buck World Championship, which is now under the Buckfest branding. Obviously, the marketing team has found out where the marijuana is located. The uh interesting uh component here is that uh the buck, big buck uh hunter tournament, which will be taking place in october. Uh is uh fighting for 125 000 compared to the 200 000, but either way, it has a strong following, as well as a strong social media following, and both of these events were streamed, and the Buckfest will be streamed on Twitch Live. This is a very important component of the wider social entertainment model. These products, birthed in the amusement industry, have found their feet in the hospitality market. I would argue that this is a path that they have plowed, a furrow that they have plowed, that others in the competitive socializing sector will have to follow.
Speaker 1:And not just, I would say just to add on. I mean not just something that was birthed in the amusement industry and then moved into the social entertainment sector, but also into the esports sector, being streamed on Twitch and gaining a larger, broader audience. That's going to bring people into the venues that have these games inside.
Speaker 2:We're due to see a shakeup and change in the esports sector, moving away more from its kind of tournament and championship routes to much more social media, twitch kind of environment with strong sponsorship. And I would argue that both the Golden Tee and the Big Buck events fall into being better described as esports events than they do into champions or tournament events. But but again, we will have a chance in a future sound off to go into much more detail. At the moment in saudi arabia, we have the season taking place with a number of events and very strong esports components, and we will be talking at the end of that event about the the future of esports, especially with some of the announcements that will be due. Moving from the biz to the tech, and we're seeing some pivoting in the VR sector. I've already alluded to this. The VR terminology and consumer VR is being dropped and companies are repositioning themselves to be better attuned towards the new landscape for XR, mr and AR technology. Our friends at Varjo have been focused on enterprise products.
Speaker 2:They have released VR technology with mixed reality capabilities for the automotive industry, for the flight and simulation training industry and they had dabbled with consumer sales of their product as a high-end VR PC system but they kind of backed away from that because there isn't much market in it. At the same time now they've announced that their previous range of products, their previous generation three systems, will stop being supported at the end of this year. That kind of draws a line in that generation of VR product and now looks towards what the future of MR and AR products with their next generation technology is going for Continuing that kind of drawing a line in the sand between one previous generation of technology towards the next generation. We learned that the John Wicks VR experience as well as the John Wicks VR consumer game content has stopped being supported, will be removed from the libraries. John Wicks had quite a successful second generation and third generation life in location-based entertainment. We had a number of facilities that started operating the John Wicks VR experience as kind of a groundbreaker of a concept. But that market has moved on. Now, even though this technology was cutting edge at the time, it has been superseded as well, as the owners of the IP want to see a much better return of investment for allowing operations to run this IP. So they have removed this game from availability for both location-based as well as consumer usage.
Speaker 2:Moving on, and we have seen a company that has strong VR credentials pivoting in a brand new direction for their fourth generation VR application. Divevr, a company that I've had the pleasure of doing business with, is known for its VR experience facilities. They opened up in Prague the Gollum experience. They've opened up at the Westfield facility their own virtual reality free roaming game experience. They opened a pop-up experience and the company now has taken their experience from free roaming, as well as putting large numbers of audience through their attractions, are putting large numbers of audience through their attractions and they've come up with their own arena VR system to join the whole arena VR systems that are out there. But they have doubled down on making this self-service.
Speaker 2:It struck me when I was using this and I had the pleasure of using this at an event that we'll talk about in a minute. It is all automated. You know, you use the kiosk to book your game and make the payments and then you walk to the locker and the locker automatically opens where your headset and your controllers are. Your game walks you through the experience and at the end you put your stuff back into the locker. It closes, it cleans, it seals, it washes, it sweeps. This is a platform that has been created, you know, focused minutely on the operator-less approach. Many of you know that I am still very quizzical about operator-less applications, but this one, it tries the most, to you most, to achieve that operator-less application, even with special security capabilities. And if someone tries to take the headset or drops the headset or treats the system badly, then the owner of the system will know about it and will be able to deal with it. So again, going back to me saying it's not operator less, it's just operator light touch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I touched on this just briefly at the LBX show just a couple of days ago because, you know, I think what's really interesting about this is the attendant-free component. You know, it is another free roam arena. We have plenty of them on the market, but they've done something that's a little bit differentiated, at least in being a attendant free. And I think what is? We have seen success in that in the immersive enclosure space. So Valo Arena being one of the most well-known we've talked about that on this show many times most well-known We've talked about that on this show many times that is very successfully run without an attendant.
Speaker 1:But again, we have Cubix as well and we have others that are in the immersive enclosure, immersive inbox probably being the exception, because there's more stuff to affix to your head, and that's what we have here with this. I do question whether or not it can truly be attendant-free, because you're going to have customers who've never put on a VR headset before and they're going to struggle with it and want to know, and it's not going to be quite lined up and somebody's going to have to come and support it or at least be nearby where they can support as needed. So I think, as you said, attendant light is probably the approach that's going to be needed here, but at least they're trying to differentiate their arena from the others on the market.
Speaker 2:If they're prepared to embrace attendant lights, then this is one of the best approaches, though this is an approach that I know other companies can emulate and we're getting very close to a critical mass in the VR arena mid-scale, arena-sized business, which, again, is something that I know that we're going to be addressing around IAO and Patai. I had the pleasure to attend Hyper Japan, which was a major event in London promoting all things Japanese, from food drink to anime, from food drink to anime, and this was my first chance to see Gashippo being adopted in the wild by its core audience. So where we had the chance to visit the London Genda facility first of their installations here was an event dedicated for individuals that get capsule gaming and collectibles of Japanese nature. Really often we were surprised to see two amusement companies there. Well, not surprised, but it was kind of a line in the sand of where the market is pivoting towards Our friends from Bandai.
Speaker 2:Namco Amusement Europe actually had a presence there, promoting their Gashippo platform, both in its self-service operation colors as well as their wide range of collectible Japanese merch, and we had an appearance from Genda Europe, who I was actually able to have a chat with and get a better understanding of their Western approach for the market. Here. Everybody got it very well supported and it was underlined that this would be a major rollout. And we are at a point, a critical point, where Japanese IP products that embrace the Japanese anime and manga of high net worth from a Western point of view and there's breaking news, as we're recording this, that we'll be talking at our next Sound Off. That kind of underlines the importance of having that Japanese-y capability. We in the amusement industry and the out-of-home entertainment industry may need to rethink how we embrace our Japanese amusement adventures. Bandai, send the police around to take me away.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that ambulance is behind me or behind you.
Speaker 2:It's not an ambulance, it's the police.
Speaker 2:Then get out of the room and go hide. They'll always catch me Going on a little bit about that Japanese-y. I know Adam's going to be talking about this in much greater detail, but we have here in the UK the testing of a Japanese amusement release that will soon be rolled out in Europe, depending on how well the test goes, but Bandai Namco now working with Capcom on a Resident Evil amusement system in an environmental cabinet kind of underlined, where we're going on top of what I was talking about a few sound offs ago about Kanavi coming into this sector, Just talking about the trends in the amusement and the attractions in the out-of-home sector. We're seeing a trend in LED floor systems.
Speaker 2:We have a number of companies now that have rolled out applications that use the latest digital floor technology, what I would call digital floor technology. Rather than depending on projections, which come with their own limitations on lighting, we're now seeing products and entertainment systems going towards an LED floor system Our friends at Moment Factory with their augmented games floor system, which has been rolled out in Canada, as well as popping up in Lane 7 facilities. I had the pleasure of visiting the Cube, which is a multi-immersive enclosure game show social entertainment venue that uses special cubes for multiplayer and single player activities that also utilize a digital floor system. And, of course, we've already reported on our friends at Conductile with their arena system that has been rolled out to a number of venues, including Dave Buster's, that uses an LED floor component.
Speaker 1:You know I think that there is some legs to the LED floor component to be, I guess the pun unintended actually, but you know, I think it depends right. So I'm skeptical of the fully enclosed spaces, primarily because of the experience I've had. Playing Immersive Gamebox was very warm. It got very hot inside very quickly, you know, and part of that is the projection mapping for Immersive Gamebox versus an LED floor, which are cooler than the projectors as well, so you don't have to worry as much about that. But the arena is also mostly fully enclosed for the most part, and so is the cube, and so I think one of the things I do like about the augmented games is that it is meant to be more of an open arena versus an enclosed arena. Its square footage is significant, typically, compared to some of the others, so it's less of a drop-in attraction. You pretty much would want to build your facility around it versus being able to drop in a conductor booth, for example, an arena conductor booth conductor booth, for example.
Speaker 2:You know an arena conductor booth.
Speaker 2:I think that all of these systems, except for the cube, all of the systems that are being sold as standalone entertainment attractions, will have to cut their cloth to suit the needs of the market.
Speaker 2:I know that our friends at Moment Factory are evaluating the square footage that their system will actually inhabit and cutting their cloth to suit the market. We know that the arena will be soon available in a different size, and even our friends at ValoMotion are in deep discussion about maybe another version of their system, which we will hopefully be able to talk about in a couple of months' time. Going on about other developers coming up with concepts and we're at that point now where companies are kind of trailing that they have new developments in the works. As we get closer to the September and November conference seasons, our friends at Rivals Innovation have been trailing what I would call a mixture of skee-ball, pinball and social entertainment game experience. From what we've seen of the videos teasing battle boards, it looks like this is going to be one to watch that could find itself competing with the shuffle boards and the augmented reality dart systems, which is nice to see.
Speaker 1:Real quick, just as a quick aside, because I wonder if there will be some issues coming up here pretty soon. Um, just sharing my screen, you have the uh. We also have our friends at social rivals, which has the projection mapped mini golf lanes, and boy, that rivals here uh font, or that rivals logo looks uh, very, very close to uh, this rivals logo here. You know, you've got the yellow, you've got the little slash. It happens to be in the r versus the A, but they are different skills and there's going to be some brand disputes here pretty soon.
Speaker 2:I think we need to have a come to Jesus moment with a number of these companies and competitive, socializing and social entertainment about branding.
Speaker 2:These guys are making some schoolboy errors and they don't want to admit it until it's too late, and then it's red faces and exiting executives all around. Let's hope that some saner heads can sit down and come up with some better branding to match the innovation of their technology. Our friends at FunSpot with a name that is really difficult compared to all of the number of of Fun Spot facilities out there, this French-based company is known for their plyo trampoline interactive entertainment systems system that we reported on a number of times over the years uh two and four player system where you jump up and down on a mini trampoline pad and your character is represented on screen. They have now margins that or categorize that as their plyo or pleo, uh mini and now they've created a major trampoline system that can be configured for multiple trampoline venues and they've also created a tower system based upon the tower trampoline system. All using screens, all interactive, all gamified active entertainment experiences and they're hoping now that with this kind of deliverable that they will be much more appealing to facility drop-in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is interesting. The Plyo Tower seems really innovative. Same thing with Court, obviously. Plyo Mini, Plyo, Plyo, Plyo, whatever I guess we'll say. Plyo, Plyo Mini is very reminiscent of Valor Jump, so it doesn't seem to maybe bring anything other than maybe some gameplay, some different graphics and some other things that are different than the Valor Jump. But the Play-O-Tower is interesting. I would really like to see this in action.
Speaker 2:I would argue about their gamification and their screens. They go for a very small screen presentation. I know the reasons why and there is technology that they could think about employing that would open their system up to being more gamified. But again, I'm not here to give them free consultancy. I'm just here to wish them the best for their new repositioning.
Speaker 2:And finally, ending this particular session, some sad news. The passing at 71 of Hulk Hogan actually touches our industry and myself as well. I had the pleasure of meeting the Hulkster as part of his involvement in the amusement industry, supporting a brand new Hulkamania cut rope or cut string game that was launched last year into the market. He actually made the time to come to iAlpa last year to help launch this product. He gave a lot of his time. He was a very magnanimous individual and I would just like to pass on my condolences to his family and those of his friends that have been touched by his departure. From where we go, we're having a weird week. We just lost Ozzy, who also had links to the amusement industry through the Black Sabbath pinball table setups, and now we lose the Hulkster. These things are inevitable, but anyway I will be raising a glass to all.
Speaker 1:Indeed.
Speaker 2:Anyway, thank you all for taking the time to fall asleep during this session. Um, please make sure that you're subscribed to the stinger and to the entertainment social arena. We've had some comments from certain individuals that they stopped receiving their emails in May and had to resubscribe. I don't know what the reasons were for that, but just make sure that you're receiving it rather than just depending on the social media feed. Also, don't forget that you can consume this through the video on YouTube, as well as you can consume the Stinger Report and the other newsletters through an audio version. So if you don't want to have to bother reading and you want to have something to walk the dog to, then the audio podcast versions. And also please support, give us some likes, give us your comments, play part of this community rather than just being a silent consumer in the background. Anyway, brandon, have I gone through everything okay?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. There's another solid sound off, Kevin, and I will see you on the next one. Have a good one. Thanks for watching.
