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LBX Collective
The LBX Show #45 - Do The Beach opens, major Sega news, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
On this week's LBX Show, BW and friends discuss how the location-based entertainment industry shows signs of recalibration with a slowdown in new openings while established brands pursue ambitious expansion plans and technology integrations reshape arcade experiences. We review industry developments including Sega's leadership change, F1 Arcade's Vegas debut, and how NRG Adventure Park plans to open 100 locations in just four years.
• Recent soft opening of Do the Beach in North Port, Florida, implementing Intelliplay gamification
• NRG Adventure Park planning aggressive expansion with 100 locations in four years
• Hasbro City's Candyland Store opening locations in Mexico as an example of retailtainment
• Paul Williams stepping down as CEO of Sega Amusements International
• GTI China Expo showcasing new racing games and cabinet designs
• F1 Arcade preparing Vegas location with 87 simulators as part of planned 30-venue expansion
• Pinstripes closing all locations including recently opened venues
• Arcade racing games evolving with new features like the drifting mechanics in Speed Rider 40X
• Shift in VR implementation with fewer VR-only arcades opening
• Email marketing best practices including proper setup, list maintenance, and mobile optimization
All right well, welcome everybody to the LBX show. I'm your host, brandon Wiley, and today we've got a great show lined up for you and we're going to start out with some news you should know, and then we're going to roll right into open and shut with Kevin Williams. You're going to review all the latest openings and closings and trends from this last week and you'll notice there's still a little bit of a slowdown, it's a little bit of a reset, but we'll talk about that. And then we're going to hear from Adam Pratt from Arcade Corner, as he covers quite a bit of news actually on the amusement front, especially from the GTI China Expo and including some major Sega news. So we'll definitely get into that. And then, finally, we're going to close out with promo pro tips with Chuck DeMonte, and he's going to share tips on how to execute proper email marketing. All right, well, all that being said, let's dive into some news you should know.
Speaker 2:All right, well, I had the pleasure of spending some time in North Port Florida this last week for the soft opening of Do the Beach, and we talked about this a little bit last week's show. But Do the Beach is a new franchise concept from the guys over at Galaxy Multirides and I was there implementing our IntelliPlay gamification platform, but they built a great experience, so we just had a really fun time. As you can tell in the background, here I've got Dewey the penguin. He is their mascot because, you know, when you go to the beach, what do you think of? You think of a surfing penguin, right? So I got this mascot to take home. I also got this nice little Do the Beach bracelet and, yeah, they had a great soft opening. It was actually two nights back to back. It was Wednesday night and Thursday night and they just had you, you know, friends and family was wednesday night. Then they had a like police and first responders uh night, thursday night, and then their grand opening was this last weekend, which I didn't get to see the grand opening, but was there for their soft openings, and they just did a great job. And this is, you know, you can see the little intelliplay leaderboards there which I'm super excited about, and but then their inflatables just the whole space looks really good. Uh, this is a little bit small here, but this is basically Ryan, who's on my team. She's heads up operations and she was phenomenal over there myself and then the two founders of Do the Beach, the Wind Cups, robin and Mike, and yeah, I mean there's just some pretty cool stuff that we had here. So just throw this up here, and this is just a little bit of the background. Now, what's cool about this is we are going to actually, while I was there, I had the opportunity to record a behind our doors for Do the Beach, so Mike walked us around the whole facility. This is just some video footage of just some of the early stage where the kids were coming in for the friends and family night, jumping around in their space, but we're going to be doing a Behind Her Doors. We filmed that. We're going to be interviewing Mike on Tuesday and that's going to be airing the first week of October, so definitely stay tuned. This is a beautiful facility that they've done, and so just congratulations to those guys for getting open. It's not easy. They were doing it right up to the last minute and it's pretty cool, all right.
Speaker 2:So the next thing I want to talk about is the NRG Adventure Park. So we've talked about them on Open and Shut. We referenced when they opened up their first location in New Jersey and, frankly, they've got a new location that's 40,000 square feet planning to open up in Fargo, north Dakota. Every time I hear something that's going to Fargo I'm like gosh, is there really enough population density to support another 40,000 square foot park? I mean, they're not the first thing to go into Fargo, and so you know maybe there must be. But you know, the one thing that kind of blew my mind about these guys is that they plan to open 100 locations in the next four years. So that's pretty remarkable when you think about it.
Speaker 2:So this is these guys here, it's NRG. I know I say NRG it's supposed to be energy, is the whole idea behind this. So Energy Adventure Park, but anyway, they call themselves the ultimate action zone. But 100 locations in the next four years. When you think about that, that is a location every two weeks. So they plan to open up a location every two weeks, which is insane to me, because you know you go here to select my park and they've got, you know, all these locations that they have planned coming soon.
Speaker 2:You know, here's the one location in New Jersey that is open, but they've got an awesome location Charleston, nampa, frederick, greensboro, greenfield, Wisconsin. They've actually got an address for that one Little Rock, plano, texas. They also have an address for the one in Plano. And again, let me just go down this list. I definitely, if you are an adventure park, if you are a trampoline park and you want to know if you have any competition coming into your area. Well, energy apparently plans to have a hundred locations spread throughout the US in the next four years and I would definitely come here to their site and start scrolling through this list to see if their city, if your city, is mentioned on this list, because my guess is they don't have a lease sign for Nashville, tennessee, for example, but because it's on this list, they are working on getting a lease sign for Nashville, Tennessee, just as an example, right?
Speaker 2:But Troy, michigan, san Antonio, baltimore, like St Louis, they have all these locations just ready to roll and I apologize, I said their second location, the Fargo location, will be their third. They have two locations open up in New Jersey so far, but they are a pretty classic adventure park, so they've got a bunch of different attractions. They definitely have the Valo Jump, they have the Donut Slide, which is a lot of fun. They have ninja courses, zip lines, dodgeball, basketball, jousting pits all the typical stuff you expect to find in a regular adventure park, but then some other stuff as well Free climb, which apparently just is another donut slide, but anyway, they've got just a lot of stuff going on here. So one to keep in mind if you're in the adventure park or trampoline park business. If they truly are going to meet their growth plans, as they've identified, then you should definitely be aware of these guys coming down the line.
Speaker 2:All right, the next thing up I want to talk about is the. Every time I click on that it like takes me down and makes me small. It's so annoying. Come on, streamyard, get it together. All right. Candyland Store. These guys have officially opened their doors in two locations in Mexico Park, tepeyac and Hasbro City, and again in Mexico, and this is, you know, one of, like, hasbro City's iconic brands.
Speaker 2:I'm actually a little bit surprised that the Candyland store has taken this long to open in Hasbro City. It makes sense that it maybe hasn't opened in its own independent location, but just really surprised that it took this long to open up in Hasbro City, given the fact that Candyland is one of the original board games by Hasbro. It was launched in 1948. It was inducted into the Hall of Fame, the Toy Hall of Fame in 2005. So obviously, if you're a kid and you grew up here in the United States and probably around the world, you played Candyland at some point, because it's such an easy game to play, especially with a really small kid, because you don't have to know numbers, you have to know colors, right, and so it's pretty cool. I'm just shocked, frankly, that it took so long to implement that.
Speaker 2:They've got, obviously, a bunch of candy for sale. They've got this build your own ice cream station as well. You don't actually build it yourself, they build it for you, but you could just select what you want on top of your cone and it is just. You know, frankly, it just looks cool. It's like a Candyland store. But the reason I bring this up is okay, you're like it's in Mexico. You know Mexico City and Hasbro City, very specific to Hasbro.
Speaker 2:My point of bringing this up is this was an easy win for them to just increase their per cap for their guests by adding in a what is basically a merchandise store. So if you're, if you have a park and you know, or you have something, it doesn't have to be branded like Hasbro, right. You don't have to come in and bring in some IP like Candyland to go and do this. Just open up merch, just have merchandise. People want to be able to buy stuff like this, right? So this stuffy is like a filled stuff thing, right, so that people want to be able to buy this merchandise. They want to buy shirts If they like, love your brand and love your park. Like, let them buy stuff or let them just buy other things. Like, I know you have your concession stand, but like, make it cool, they can walk in.
Speaker 2:Many of you have redemption stores. Don't sell the stuff that you have available in your redemption stores, right? So we're not talking about selling redemption items in a store. We're talking about a separate merchandise area. Highly recommend it. It's just one easy way to increase and boost your per cap for every time that guest walks through the door. So, anyway, that is News you Should Know. Coming up after our quick break, we're going to dive right into some open and shut with Kevin Williams. 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 3:Hey, hello On the road, as it were. How are you, Brandon?
Speaker 2:Yeah, also on the road, Just as I mentioned earlier in the LBX show during my news. You should know I was out here for Do the Beach opening, so you know now in transition on the way to Orlando to spend some time tomorrow morning before I fly back home. So that'd be nice, yeah.
Speaker 3:So, let's jump into the openings and shots that we have and, as you can see, we have returned to normality, as it were, following now that we're in autumn, as it were. Following now that we're in autumn, it is clear that we are seeing a much more stretched out selection of venues and I can go through them now at a leisurely pace rather than what we've been dealing with for the last few months, if not years. The situation in the UK. We're seeing a greater investment being put into immersive entertainment experiences, audience-based experiences. Obviously, if you have an audience, you can charge and you have a greater return. And some of those immersive stage performance events are now becoming multiplayer. They are gamified, and our friends at Punch Drunk, who have a reputation for developing audience participation experiences, has just announced the launch of Lander 23.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it'll be interesting. This is nine performances each day. That's pretty significant, um, and and I'm assuming there are live action actors as well um, in addition to the uh, to the game itself so interactive elements, uh live uh actors taking, uh taking the audience through the experience uh, quite an intense uh role they're going to do.
Speaker 3:This is only going to be open for a few months. Punch Drunk seemed to make pop-up temporary installations rather than permanent installations, but you know this will be a driver of the market Moving on, and the facility in Prague has updated. So the playground used to be a Hamleys retail toy store that had a virtual reality experience in its basement. It has now rejigged itself. It still has the virtual reality experiences, but they've now reinvested in their entertainment offering. They put in about 10 attractions dotted throughout the building, and this is really an example of retail attainment. This is an entertainment facility first and a toy store second.
Speaker 2:This place looks pretty incredible. Actually They've got some phenomenal layout and aesthetics. I wouldn't say theming necessarily. I guess it they've got some phenomenal you know, phenomenal layout and aesthetics. I wouldn't say theming necessarily. I mean I guess it kind of ties into their like playground theme. But the toy store is actually pretty remarkable and I think it's a brilliant component to add. I mean, I think a lot of venues don't take advantage of merch as well as they should and I know it's not all just branded merch to the playground, obviously but they just don't take advantage of the captive audience they already have who are excited and I know sometimes they see it as competing potentially to redemption. But if you have different things, you're not selling the stuff that you would have at the redemption counter, you're selling other items than obviously it can be a pretty significant revenue driver.
Speaker 3:I've had the pleasure of walking around the facility when it was the Hamleys and when they had their VR experience. From the pictures it looks like they've really taken it to the next level and maybe it could be a component of a rollout of more facilities along a similar line. But we'll have to wait and see. Our friends at Synergy you know it is a syn-attainment facility. Fundamentally this is a 98,000 square and it's going into the crowded Texas market. I'm interested by this one because you know they're really pushing the boutique bowling social entertainment component along with the conventional entertainment aspects. They have escape rooms here and they've got about 80 amusement pieces on the floor. But again, we'll have to wait and see how the soft opening and the full opening go to get a better picture of how this fits into their model.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm beginning to wonder too. When you see, see three level go-kart track, I'm really beginning to wonder if you know, are we at the point where now, in order to, is this a thing in order to remain competitive? It's certainly not a differentiator anymore. Multi-level go-kart tracks used to be a differentiator and you know, as we talked about fast tracks last week, really their differentiator is the fact that when their two tracks are combined, they have the longest track in florida, um, and so you know, kind of wonder when we're going to see the leveling out of go-kart tracks again. I mean, because the cost to build and you know, I understand you're also saving square footage because you're going so you can still have a longer race track for your go-kart experience. But it does seem to be like a lot of extra work to build in this go-kart track, when I'm not sure that it's really a differentiator as much as it was maybe when Andretti started doing it, you know, five plus years ago.
Speaker 3:I've had some transparency to the ups and downs in the go-karting side of the business recently through some work that we've been doing. It is clear that it isn't a differentiator that it used to be. That is obvious. It is clear also that the maintenance and the operation of full-size go-karting is not generating the return that it used to and I think we're due to see a shake-up in the technology and we will touch a little bit upon that in a coming sound off. Moving on and here we go, some of the examples of the technology that is migrating away from the traditional go-kart to a smaller, easier to operate, easier to manage kind of solution. Easier to manage kind of solution. Our friends at the Dubai Kart Dome have decided to drop in an attraction called Rush which is using the latest of the Asian electric kart systems with all four-wheel steer and drifting capability. A differentiator, but you would expect that from a carting facility that is trying to stay relevant.
Speaker 2:And you'd notice from those pictures and obviously we haven't had a chance to experience this yet but the fact that you also don't have a full-size helmet, that's going over the top and we've talked about this in, I can't remember if either in a sound off or open and shut but the idea of trying to create more accessibility around your carding experience and one of those things is, if you go to, you know if you're going and you're going out with your friends, you don't want to mess up your hair, you don't want to put the head sock on and the full helmet on, you know, and people sometimes can feel claustrophobic in those environments and this really opens up a karting experience to be still engaging, still immersive, still interactive and fun, but yet not have the same level of headgear requirements.
Speaker 3:I think very strongly that the future of entertainment go-karting is going to be helmetless because of the speed limitations and that will open up a brand new opportunity for engagement. But again we can touch upon that in greater detail later on. Our friends at main event there's been some Dave and Buster's news which again we're going to be talking about in sound off. But you know the openings continue and main event has thrown open their facility in North Carolina. You'll remember a couple of sound offs ago and opens and charts. We were talking about the North Carolina market and what was happening there and here we have a 47,000 square entertainment facility being dropped into that crowded market. This is about 62, 63 main events out there in North America and again we're still trying to get a handle on how much has changed in their offering now after various restructurings and pivoting within the C-suite. But it is what it is.
Speaker 2:They keep building them. I guess I mean we never hear about them on the Dave and Buster's earnings calls or any of the press announcements that we hear about Dave Buster's and they just keep chugging away and they're probably like the one component of their business that just seems to be somewhat stable, even though they haven't really evolved or iterated their attraction mix or even their experience in many, many years.
Speaker 3:I get the feeling if it ain't broke, don't fiddle with it, kind of mentality with main event and again, I would like to get into one of the latest openings of a main event just to see, from my personal point of view, how much that's changed.
Speaker 3:Again, hotel entertainment resort business is now parachuting in entertainment and the Big Horn Resort in Montana. They've turned around and created an arcade facility within their operation. I suppose we should call this resort attainment, as it were. The interesting thing about it it's about 3,000 square, it's got about 43 machines in it and from the picture they haven't been that ambitious with the themality or that it is the placement of amusement machines, and they went to a well-known distributor to get their hands on the latest machines, drop them into the locality and stand back and count the money, I suppose is their attitude here. For me, it's a wasted opportunity. If you're going to put an entertainment facility into your space in 2025, then you'd better make sure it's future-proofed. Funny enough, one of the things that I'm doing here at the conference is touching upon the future-proofing. But again, another entertainment facility added to the list.
Speaker 2:It's super underwhelming. And you know, look, I mean, maybe they just took advantage of the fact that they've got a captive audience. They're in Billings, montana, which you know how many people are going to leave Big Horn Resort to go to other things and how much of their entertainment is in Billings, I don't know. So maybe they just decided they could get away with something that's, you know, of this really lackadaisical caliber. But yeah, I think it was a wasted opportunity for doing something that's at least a little bit interesting and exciting.
Speaker 3:The Montana Betson facility has been able to clear some machines from their warehouse. Interesting one popped up on my radar. Uh, it is a, a company that has uh opened, uh in maine a vr facility. With some amusement and this for me is could be one of the last of the major um announcements of a vr arcade specific facility before we pivot towards the new direction that we're charting in the XR sector, away from the VR sector. I went through the information Brandon will love the website for this facility. The company is, the owners of the companies are in the track to hire and plant business and this entertainment operation entertainment operation, I think is a labor of love edition. They purchased a number of the latest chinese vr systems and they've thrown open the doors of their site. Uh, you know the news report from the local main recorder there was saying that about two million has been invested into this. Um, yeah, it is what it is and it will be interesting to see how this weathers the change in the VR sector for our industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, to your point about the website. I was like, well, what website? Because there isn't one for these guys, or at least not one that I can find anywhere.
Speaker 3:I can send you a link, but it took my search engine a lot of hard labor to actually find the link for this. None of the media services gave a link to their website and it is. The information about BVR is actually hidden in the company's information right at the bottom, information right at the bottom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and you know we've talked about this before given maybe the demographics or the population density, everybody just kind of knows that this place is open in town and you don't need a website. I don't know, but I feel like in 2025, it doesn't really matter even what level of awareness you have in the local community you should have at least some base site for it, even if it's a Facebook page that's linked from Google. But yeah, we'll see how this works out.
Speaker 3:It is important to have a social media and a web presence. Here at Amusement360, we actually had a session dedicated to the marketing and presentation, and part of that importance is that you appear in the analytics for the search, the trip advisor and the certain tools, no matter if everybody in your community knows you exist. You're preaching to the choir when you really should be talking to the people who don't know that you exist, or would make the time to actually come over and see who you are. But again, it's a decision they've made. Our friends at f1 arcade have bitten the bullet and come up with a date now for the opening of the las vegas facility.
Speaker 3:It's inside the forum shops at caesar palace. I'm looking forward to seeing this. This has got quite a large number of machines in 87 simulators, where most of their venues usually comprise about 40 to 60 systems, so they've really gone all out. You would expect them to do that because of the Vegas Grand Prix, and also F1 Arcade does seem to be pushing very heavily its positioning. This is their fifth US site and they're now talking about having 30 venues open within the next five years. So interesting times ahead.
Speaker 2:This one is destined to do well. I mean, it's based in the Caesars. The Forum Shops is heavily trafficked. So I imagine that if an F1 arcade is going to succeed anywhere, it's going to succeed in Vegas, especially given the fact that the F1 actually does come through Vegas. But man planning to do one venue every two months over the next five years, I do wonder if the US can handle that level of F1 arcade saturation, especially if they're all going to be at this size and scale. 87 simulators is a lot, especially given they're a competitive, socializing environment.
Speaker 3:I think this will be the high watermark regarding what you can do with the current F1RK format. I don't believe the rollout numbers that I'm being quoted now. It seems to be part of the course that you say that you're going to be opening 20 or 30 facilities in the next five years, because they know that none of us, except for us nerds in the industry, are going to come up and tap them on the shoulder in five years time and go. You only opened 15 or whatever. So again, it is a generic statement to say that they are going to be moving forward with an active opening program as best. Moving on and mixture of an entertainment component to a existing restaurant chain.
Speaker 3:Pizza ranch have two flavors, pardon the pun of location. They either have the standard pizza ranch pizza entertainment environment or they have the pizza ranch that includes their fun zone amusement. And they've just opened up again in montana seeing a pattern uh, the opening of, uh the order, the addition of a 5 000 square um entertainment components to the existing restaurant there, 70 amusement pieces very heavily themed to promote them. Even the air hockey tables are branded systems. It is a standard entertainment facility attached to a family restaurant and it is a proven formula which this particular operation has been rolling out across at least 67 facilities. Our friends in dubai have developed a children-centric creation as well as soft play or active entertainment environment.
Speaker 2:No great shakes here, but you know, as we're now down to slim pickings of new openings, I've included it onto the list well, you know, I think, one of the things that I appreciate about dubai, you know, while they tend to spend a lot, they overbuild.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, they try to one up. There's a level of one-upsmanship, and the things that they do, uh, they are very creative and they are willing to try different formats, different types of entertainment, different mixes of things together. Um, you know, in this case, the things that they do, they are very creative and they are willing to try different formats, different types of entertainment, different mixes of things together. You know, in this case it's crafts, it's food, it's, you know, it's also play, you know, which is different than some of the other things that have gone to the City Land Mall, which is massive, by the way, massive mall. But you know, I like what they do. You know, I like the level of experimentation they're willing to do and, and I think that we will begin to see them take less and less of the ideas from other places and create their own there, and then we'll be, we'll see some of those concepts flowing this direction as well, instead of the other way around, which it had been up to probably the last few years.
Speaker 3:If you don't keep an eye especially Dubai on what they do to enthuse a very sophisticated audience that has a very large opportunity of entertainment to pick from, then you're missing out and, to mirror your comments regarding we better take stock of this.
Speaker 3:We can see that the Chuck E Cheese operation in that territory raised their gain long before the Chuck E Cheese in North America turned around and improved their operation, jumping into the shuts, and we have now got confirmation that the claims previously that pinstripes were, uh, stripes was going to go through a finding of new revenue or a white knight, or that they were going to be acquired or anything, hasn't come to anything and they have now actively started to close down the facilities. Um, this is a shame. Uh, for example, thenut Creek facility has only been open for about eight or nine months since opening, since we reported on its opening and then now to close in our industry regarding pinstripes move and some of the claims that were made that haven't fulfilled. But I just wanted to touch upon in this particular sector that they are closing the doors on their sites.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is an important one. We don't need to obviously dig into a debrief as to. You know, we've already touched quite heavily on pinstripes and why we think they've closed, but this is one that our industry should take stock of, should really review what they're doing and how they're doing it and making sure that they're not repeating some of the same mistakes that pinstripes did as they moved in this direction and got closer and closer to bankruptcy and closure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, head in the sand mentality for the C-suite is not suitable in this current climate, but we can talk about that a little bit more in detail later on. Anyway, that's it from me. Hopefully we will have a little bit more news about openings following the IALPA European event, but I think it's clear to see that we are now coming to a point where 10 facilities, maybe in a month, may be the type of openings and closings that we're going to be having to deal with for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 2:It seems, at least after the deluge that we had at the beginning of the year, a little bit more like a sane level of growth and expansion and new openings.
Speaker 3:Well, that's it for me, Wishing you all a safe one.
Speaker 2:All right, enjoy the remaining part of.
Speaker 1:Amusement 360. Thank you. If you run a location-based entertainment brand and want to attract more visitors, check out Radius. They use real-time location data and customized marketing strategies to help brands like yours stand out. Radius can boost your foot traffic and build a loyal customer base. Plus, they're offering a complimentary local market analysis to show you exactly how they can help you grow Curious. Visit Radiusco and ask about your free market analysis.
Speaker 2:That's R-A-Y-D-I-U-S dot C-O. All right. Well, that was a great open and shut with Kevin Williams, and now we're going to roll into Arcade Corner with Adam Pratt lot to cover today, so I'm just going to be jumping into it.
Speaker 4:It's been, our trade show season has already started. I'm going to try and get a little bit of what I can of GTI, asia, china Expo in. But of course this week we're going to be having IAAPA Expo Europe. I haven't seen too many announcements on there, although, with what we're going to start with is this is the biggest news of the moment We'll be tied a little bit in Taiapa Expo Europe, but let's see what we can pack into our 13 minutes or so.
Speaker 4:But news arrived Friday morning that Paul Williams, who I presume that many of you may know him personally, has stepped down as CEO and Executive chairman from Sega Amusements International, and so the company sent out a press release talking a little bit about his history and saying that the existing board and management team have Paul's complete confidence, although it does not say yet who the new CEO will be. I have my own speculation as to that, but I'm not going to share that publicly for now. We'll just wait and see what they say. I have to imagine that they'll announce the new CEO soon, whether that's at IAPA Expo Europe or just sometime within the coming weeks. I assume that they will before IAAPA Expo in Orlando, but I've met Paul many times at trade shows as well. Really wish him the best in the future. So, really wish him the best in the future. Always sad to see people moving on, but at the same time, totally understandable. At some point we all retire from the work that we do, and so just wish him the best.
Speaker 4:Also in Sega News, they announced that they are bringing a game called Speed Rider 40X to the West, and they didn't put out a press release, but on their website, as well as on their YouTube channel, they released this trailer showing Speed Rider 40X, which was at GTI Asia China Expo, and just wasn't really expecting to see them bring this particular game over, because there was a lot of racing games that were shown at GTI Asia China and so it was kind of just take a guess as to which one they were going to do. Sorry, this is playing, for some bizarre reason, at potato quality. There we go, there's 1080p, but a very impressive-looking game designed by a company called IGS, which has been around since, I think, 1990 or so, and I think it was just Comuse, the Korean company that sold the prior game to this, the Speed Rider 3, in the West for a short time, I think between 2018 and 2020, but I don't know how many arcades might have picked it up. I was actually expecting Sega to pick up Storm Rider X by Wallop, because they're currently selling Stormrider 2, or at least it's still on their website. Maybe they'll remove that to focus just on this one.
Speaker 4:But this particular game does have a very interesting drifting mechanic. As you saw there at the beginning, we've had swivel bikes for a long time. Sega innovated with that on games like Hang-On, super Hang-On, and then in recent years they've been adding the motion-based platform, which personally I haven't cared about. But now, as you can see there, the actual bike can twist and turn there to simulate drifting, and so that's an interesting little mechanism there. And so, on top of that, sega has also announced that, or they previously announced, their IAAPA Expo Europe lineup, which did not mention at the time Speed Rider 40X. So I don't know if that will actually be at their IAPA Expo Europe booth, and it might not be, because if they finalize the deal at GTA Asia, china might not be enough time to actually have shipping and customs and all that stuff get to Barcelona in time. So if it's not at IAPA Ex Europe, it certainly would be at IAXpo itself in Orlando. But also it's possible that Sega will begin shipping this pretty soon, and so it'll probably just depend on when containers arrive at warehouses and all that fun stuff. But for other things that Sega has announced that will be at IAXpo Europe this week is Ubisoft All-Star VR.
Speaker 4:Now, this is actually not being sold by Sega in North America. This is LAI Games' development, and so, if you're unaware, sega Amusements International operates as a distributor for equipment across Europe and the Middle East and some other territories. I don't know all the territories, but because they operate as both a manufacturer and as a distributor, in that particular situation, they end up representing other brands, and so that's why sometimes you'll see Sega be promoting games from LAI Games, such as this case, or ICE, and I think they've done Trio Tech in the past. Or ice and, uh, I think they've done trio tech in the past, and so that's what there's. That's where you get some crossovers going on there, but this will be the debut of this brand new, uh, very impressive vr game. Uh, this shows that arcane manufacturers have not completely abandoned VR. However, I would note that at Jita Asia, china, there really wasn't a lot of VR to see. Vr arcade developments have greatly diminished from where they were just even a few years ago, certainly from before 2020, when they were really starting to pick up Steam and everything.
Speaker 4:But yeah, this is the second time that LAI Games will have worked with Ubisoft on a VR property, but this one is a wholly original thing. There was an Ubisoft All-Stars browser game, which I think you can still find it and play it out there, but graphically it's nowhere close in the same universe to this, which I think you can still find it and play it out there, but graphically it's nowhere close in the same universe to this. This is again fully designed by LAI Games in conjunction with Ubisoft, and this would essentially be kind of a sequel to the Virtual Rabbids game that came out was that 2016, 2017, around there, but of course, virtual Rabbids didn't have an interactivity or didn't have a controller where you can change things around. They later did add an update where it would shoot in one of the rides depending on where you were looking at, but it was just automatically firing. Shoot in one of the rides, depending on where you were looking at, but it was just automatically firing and of course, other competitors have come out with ways to interact with the game sense or with the VR experience sense, and so this is the first time that LAI Games will do that. Now you can get these in a two-player model, but, as you see here on the screen, it can link both together. That curved screen is actually a micro led wall, and so it sounds like it's a super impressive thing. You get to pick from different ubisoft characters and go through those scenarios there.
Speaker 4:But that again will be making its grand debut at IAAPA Expo Europe. Sega, for their part, will also be selling a new standard version of Apex Rebels. They're also picking up Subsoccer Arcade, which you had seen at the Primetime Amusements booth at IAAPA last year, and I've heard those have sold pretty well. They'll also have an interactive mini-golf, but of course it's not just Sega that's going to be at Expo Europe and, like I said, there was also GTI Asia, china Expo, which I'm going to be rushing through this because we have a limited amount of time here, but that looked like it was a very impressive event. I had a couple of people sending me photos, and so I tipped my hat to them, and that also included Wallop. Wallop sent me more photos than I could use and they had a very impressive booth. As I said online, I have to admit that I'm envious of seeing the booth setups that are done at these Chinese expos, because they put a lot of money into them.
Speaker 4:They're full of spectacle, the sort of spectacle that we don't really see in the arcade industry here out west West. Usually, if you want to see any spectacle close to it, you have to wander around IAAPA and go up to the ride producers oftentimes or in the areas that are not the arcade and games pavilion to get stuff like this. But they'll have a stage and they hired all these cosplayers and, of course, they debuted a bunch of new games. In fact, for Wallop they even hired a I can't remember if this I think this is a Chinese girl band or it might have been a J-rock band, but you know they performed and everything and they had the cosplayers walking around the booths and all that stuff Just things that we don't really see much of here out West. But they debuted new racing games, including Storm Racer 2 and Storm Rider X. They keep getting those things mixed together.
Speaker 4:One interesting thing about this particular hardware, as you can see, is that instead of using the two 65-inch screens stacked on each other which has been popular since Rothreil's debuted that idea with Fast and Furious Arcade now they're just taking one 85 than having a big black scene in between it, and it'll probably be more cost effective too, I would imagine. Um, but, and yeah, that's. This is something kevin williams is calling super deluxe. I prefer to call it tate deluxe, just for those who are really into the gaming weeds of the arcade industry. Tate is what players have called that sort of vertically-oriented monitor in the past, and so that's or Screen Deluxe, I think, is what Kevin might have called it. But Tate Deluxe for me would work, but I know most of the public probably wouldn't get what that means. But Storm Racer 2 and Storm Rider X both look very impressive. They're powered by unreal engine 5.
Speaker 4:Um, there's there was a modern combat, phantom vanguard, which is a light gun game which uses a very interesting and innovative uh, difference on the guns where it works as both where you can hold it and when you're holding it away from the mount. It works as a typical machine gun, but there are certain parts in the game where you need to mount the gun into that holder there and then it will act as a heavy artillery weapon, and so I've never seen quite a setup like that before, and so that was a cool and impressive thing to see. And it's using two tate deluxe screens to create kind of a one by one aspect ratio, as opposed to using like what drakens did by adrenaline amusements using a 100 inch led screen, which I assume is pretty expensive to do. It's probably a lot more economical just to put two screens and have that seam in the middle there, but until somebody starts making giant one by one aspect ratio tvs, they're probably not going to be getting screens like that now.
Speaker 4:Another thing that wallop was really into that got a lot of attention in gamer circles within the arcade community was the debut of a new Jew beat. This was known as U-Beat out west, but this Jew beat game originally came out in 2008 from Konami in Japan, had very, very limited release in Europe and North America. Konami had teased the new juby back in 2020, but of course we know what happened there, and so it just kind of disappeared and then it reappeared as this. I do kind of wish they would have a some addition to the name so it doesn't get confused with the older one, but very popular amongst rhythm gamers. This is one of the the first touchscreen style rhythm games that actually has these physical buttons laid out in a 16 by 16 grid where you tap the buttons when the symbols pop up. But for now this is only coming out in China. It might come out in other parts later on I assume Japan as well, but I guess they're using China as a testing ground for it first and see how it goes there. By that same token, konami is also working with Wallop to do a new cabinet for this game called Bomber Girl, which is based on the Bomberman series, which has been very popular for many years out there. Bomber Girl itself has been available in Japan.
Speaker 4:I think there was a version that came out here in the West for a time as well, but just due to time constraints I can't go over the other stuff that they had there. But yeah, they did have those games. Bandai Namco did also have a new Pac-Man whack-a-mole game, which was a surprise to see, and a kiddie a game as well, and sega didn't really have much to show there. Sorry, just I know I'm very limited on time and I'm already probably running over, but um godzilla kaiju wars. This was a surprise. Um, we have seen this testing out in the states, but this is a non-vr version of this game that, uh, rothwell's again was testing out in the States, but this is a non-VR version of this game that Rothschilds again was testing out here, but they debuted it in China. I think this is the first time that Rothschilds has ever debuted a new game over in China first, but as you can see, they just kind of turned the player seats around towards the dual screens screens. They still have those parts overhead, but you just don't have the VR headsets hanging from it. Same guns. I would assume that the gameplay has also been adjusted to work with the needs here. But personally, as an operator, I'm happy to see this, just because I can't afford the VR version. I don't know what this version will be selling for, and this is also being sold through Unis in China currently, but I assume we'll know more here soon, as Rothschilds didn't have much to comment on yet.
Speaker 4:And also the Unis had their own new dual screen racer which appears to be kind of competing with Asphalt 9 Legends, and in Chinese it's called Top Speed Legend, but in English they just published a new video promoting this, where it was something else like Nova Racer or Supernova Racer or something like that, and they also had a pogo stick racing game called Jump Master, but this also might be showing up here under a different name. Another racer called Dino Dash, where you're racing on a little dragon-ish, dinosaur-like creature. Another one called Monster Jet Riders. Eunice and others are really going crazy about racers, so I guess this is the time for racers out there. Goldstorm Pirates is being carried by Eunice over in China. Eunice also posted a video just yesterday of this giant kind of trackball racing game as well, and so I imagine we'll see more about this at IAAPA.
Speaker 4:Then there was ace amusement. So like wallop and unis are the big dogs in china, but ace has really been up and coming as well. They've been. They've sold their games through a few different manufacturers here in the us, particularly coastal amusements or amusement source international. They had quite a few games that they showed off, including a new hovercraft racing game that kind of has a H2 Overdrive or Hydra Thunder vibe to it. They had a new game to challenge Jurassic Park with Dino Attack, which came in these two different cabinet styles, a new crossbow harpooning you reel them in harpoon the fish and then reel them in, called crossbow fishing, biker's Madness, their own take on motorcycle racing, a new jet ski game, a new dragon shooting game quite a bit of stuff.
Speaker 4:And then, as mentioned, there were some other stuff there, but I'm over my time limit here. But it's fine to say. Gti Asia, china, was very busy. Lots of games, lots of stuff that will definitely be coming over to the West, as we have IAAPA Expo Europe and there will be coverage from LBX Collective on this this week. We'll see which games are going to be hitting European venues and for the most part I'd say probably 95% of the games that come out of China that are shown at IABA Expo Europe will also be coming over to North America. There might be a game or two that just kind of falls through the cracks and doesn't come over here, but we'll be seeing soon enough. Unfortunately I won't be in Barcelona to check that out, but I will have people sending me information. But stay tuned for that. Thanks for watching, thank you for giving me that extra time on there, and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, thanks Adam for a. Really I know it was a lot to cover in that arcade corner. So thanks for getting through so much of that stuff from the GTI expo and coming up. Next we've got promo pro tips with Chuck DeMonte.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. That is me, and today I want to dive into something that's very important, a very important marketing strategy that you want to make sure you get right for FECs, and that is email marketing. Okay, and email marketing on the surface, it's very easy, right, create an email, send it out okay. But there are a lot of pieces that go into doing proper email marketing, doing it well and being successful at email marketing. So I'm going to go step-by-step for you guys, okay. So the first thing is, you want to make sure you are set up properly, right. So what does that mean? So, some services, when you sign up, like a MailChimp, or you know, if you're using your online booking service, you need to verify your email address. Sometimes you need to do stuff like what's called DNS entries, right, and make sure you have certain entries in there and they'll validate the domain. That's so the Gmail, the Yahoo's and other email services providers of the world could verify that you own that domain and that it's a safe sender. Okay, so if you're not verifying and setting up your email properly, right From the email that it's sending from, and verifying the domain and doing all those things. There's a high likelihood you're gonna go into spam, right, and at that point you might as well not even do be, and at that point you might as well not even be doing email marketing because nobody's saying it, it's all going to the spam box. In some cases, it won't even deliver. It won't even allow you to go through to the spam box. So you want to make sure you set up things properly, okay, if you don't know how to do this, ask the email marketing provider. A lot of times they'll give you instructions. Hire somebody you know, cheap to a Fiverr, something like that. Set all this stuff up for you. Make sure you set it up properly. Super important. Okay. Now you have a properly set up email marketing platform channel domain ready to send, right?
Speaker 1:We need to grow your list right. So one of the best ways is always waivers, right. People hopefully opt into marketing with their waivers. That'll grow the list easily, right? But there's always other ways to do it. So get creative with how you grow your list. We do sweepstakes a lot of times to get people to opt into the email marketing right. Capture people in other ways where they get their information when they become a customer, you know, get creative here, right? There's a million different ways. Go into chat, gpc hey, give me some. You know five creative ways to grow my email marketing list, right. But you really want to try and capture people that are already your customer. For sure, email marketing is one of the best ways to get repeat customers. It helps what we call top-of-mind marketing.
Speaker 1:When people are thinking about doing something and looking for certain entertainment. You want your brand name to pop up in front of them. So step one set it up properly. Step two grow your list. Step three the design. What are you sending to these people once you have a list? Step three the design. What are you sending to these people once you have a list?
Speaker 1:So it is so common. People like um, we'll create one big image and just upload that into an email. I can't stress this enough. Do not do that, right? So when the again the Googles and the email providers of the world, when they can't see what's in the email, they are going to market a spam, right? They don't know if it's something malicious, they don't know what's being said in there, they don't know if it's some sort of spam scam, whatever, right? So if you're just putting an image in there. High likelihood it's going to get marked for spam. You're going to ruin your sender reputation because you're sending stuff like that. It's going to get in front of less people. It's going to inbox into Canva. Create a nice header image and then the rest text. Make it informational Again. Go to chat GPT and say, hey, write me up email copy.
Speaker 1:It couldn't be easier nowadays to create and design emails. You just need to find the time to do it. I think that's one of the biggest things. People go oh, I don't have time. Set time aside. It would literally probably take you an hour and a half, two hours, a month to send four emails, right, so find that time. It's super important. It will get repeat customers and increase your visitor frequency, right. So that's something you want to do, okay. And then again, you also want to make sure most people are going to be looking at this on a mobile phone. Make sure it's optimized for mobile design and mobile viewing okay, super important, all right. So we set up our email. We grew our list. We're sending out emails with nice mobile-optimized designs that are not just images, text-based.
Speaker 1:Next, a little bit more sort of intricate is setting up automations, right. So what does that mean? You could set up automations with some online booking softwares and services based on if people had a birthday party or event the previous year right, so that anniversary is coming up. You want to send them automations to try and get them to rebook again right, so you could also do things like you know, maybe they haven't come to your location in a long time. They just bought tickets, you know, a year ago and they haven't been, so say, we haven't seen you in a while. We want to. You know, want you to come back. Here's a discount offer, right, so anytime you could set up an automation based on where the person is at or their interactions with your business. That's huge. It works really really well. Again, it's a little more of a complex email marketing strategy, but well worth the time to figure it out, set it up or find the service or person that can set that up for you.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then number five is use it. Right. We work with clients all the time that have a big email list and it's like they don't want to send it out and fear people are going to unsubscribe and we're like so what's the point of having the email list? Right? I, you know, really a big believer of, like, the people who are going to unsubscribe. Commonly, they're going to unsubscribe if you send one email. They're going to unsubscribe if you send 10 emails right, so you might as well send the emails, right. We don't. Don't crush people, it gets. Don't send five emails a day, right, but I would say a range of three to six emails a month is is not not, you know, overkill. So, again, if you have the list, use it. Stay in front of people. That's how you, you know, increase your visitor, repeat customers. Ok, so, super simple. So super simple Email marketing.
Speaker 1:If you're email, do email marketing. If you're not, right, it gets people in the door. It can get new people in the door as well. Okay, if you're doing sweepstakes, stuff to get new people on the list. So one recap Set it up properly, okay. Grow your list, okay.
Speaker 1:Now one thing I actually forgot to mention a little pro tip Keep the list clean, right, if you are getting a low open rate 10%, 5%, 10% you want to be in the 20 plus percent, maybe even close to 30%, right? Remove the people that are not opening your emails, right, this is cleaning the list Because, again, gmail, if they're saying a lot of people aren't opening your list or you're already going to their spam box, right? They're going to think you are a spam sender, right? So if you remove the people and just keep the people that are opening, and then Gmail seeing you're having a 40, 50, 60% open rate, the other people that you added to the list will begin to inbox for them as well, and you get to see it right. So I forgot to add that one a little bit of pro tip Make sure you're keeping your lists clean, okay.
Speaker 1:So, one set up properly. Two grow your list and keep it clean, okay. Three have nice designs. There's no excuse not to have a nice design these days. Four set up automation, you can. And five use your email All right.
Speaker 2:Happy email marketing 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. All right, well, that was a pretty powerful Provo Pro tips by Chuck DeMonte. So thank you, chuck, for giving us all of those tips for proper email marketing. And you know what? That is a wrap for this week's show Coming up on Tuesday we have SoundOff number 91 with Kevin Williams. That is Tuesday, the 23rd of September. I'm Brandon Wiley signing off. Stay tuned and keep kicking it.
