LBX Collective
The LBX Collective aims to inform and educate, create opportunities to connect with industry peers, and to spur collaboration, discourse, and cross-pollination of ideas in the location-based entertainment and experience industry.
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LBX Collective
Sound Off #104 - Is LBE still the right term, 2026 Predictions, and more!
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On this week's show we update our lexicon for 2026 and make the case for LBX over LBE, then track the money as consoles stagnate, retail shifts to showroom mode, and IP owners push into physical transmedia experiences. Then we wrap up with Kevin's 2026 predictions in our industry.
• LBX as a clearer term than LBE
• Transmedia framing for venues and IP
• Console softness, PC and handheld migration
• Digital over physical game purchases and retro revival
• Retail as showrooms and malls as LBX anchors
• Round1’s food hall and Spo-cha positioning
• Mattel’s experience push and leadership additions
• Sphere’s restructuring and new tech leadership
• Sony consolidates their Peanuts holdings, Netflix buys Ready Player Me
• Attendantless arcades and Scandinavian lessons
• Atari Hotel funding skepticism
• Sixes bankruptcy and single-attraction risk
• Cruise lines as growth channel for amusement and XR
• VR to MR shift and story-led XR with AI on the horizon
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Are you on the edge of your seat? Because we're the wheel covering today's latest trends in location-based education. Brought to you by the LBX Collection, your community is funny. Alright, everyone, let's buckle up.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Well, welcome everybody to Sound Off with Kevin Williams. This is number 104 and our first one of 2026. So uh happy new year to you, Kevin.
SPEAKER_00:Happy New Year to you, Brendan.
SPEAKER_01:All right, awesome. Well, it is 2026, and you know it's always the time when we start, you know, the beginning of the year, you're trying to change your mind. So, you know, trying to change new habits, create new habits. So, Kevin, why don't we actually continue a habit and try to change my mind?
SPEAKER_00:So, continuing in a habit is a brand new thing. All right. Yeah. Well, uh, I I'm I'm back in the old location for a short period of time during the uh holiday. So let's move forward towards moving forwards and looking at new applications of terminology. And I think it's now important for us as an industry across all aspects of the amusement, attractions, and entertainment sector, to nail down what experiences we're offering to our audiences so they can define how they're spending their disposable income, which is under a lot of pressure, a lot of squeeze at the moment. And I am proposing really that location-based entertainment not be retired, but shall we say calms a little bit, uh, and we uh really focus on LBX, which is the experience side. I'm not just doing that uh to uh uh to blow smoke up over the LBX uh uh collective, but I feel that it is important that experiences, uh I would even go as far as saying experiential uh is uh an important component, really. And to define this is where location-based experiences is transmedia. It isn't just about a simulator, it isn't just about virtual reality, it isn't just about an amusement, it is about a transmedia, multi-entertainment experience which needs to be defined. So this is an LBX facility that's offering virtual reality. This is an LBX facility that's offering uh immersive museums rather than an LBE site, which kind of forces it into an entertainment only, this is an FEC on a much bigger scale. You know, going back to my mule mixed use leisure entertainment, that is a defined experience. And then we have the experience and the experiential. The experience is wonder, the experience uh experiential is being dropped into that wonder, actually having a physical uh activity. And that experiential is going to be the future for our business. The uh chance for groups as well as individuals to be dropped into an environment where they have agency is going to drive a lot of the future of our business. And we'll touch upon that a little bit when we uh whip out the crystal ball, shall we say, for uh this time of the year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, I we we named LBX Collective very specifically. I see we, Christine Buer, my you know, original co-founder of the LBX Collective and and myself, we named it this for a reason. It wasn't uh we could have been the LBE Collective, um, and uh we didn't. We wanted to be the LBX Collective to in embrace and encapsulate the experience sector, which at the time when we started this three years ago, two and a half, three years ago, was nascent, but it is really beginning to grow. And like as you said at the beginning, you know, it is beginning to supersede LBE now. Uh, we're seeing more overall experiential uh venu opening up and uh a broader set of experiences that people are going out to enjoy on their own and with their friends and with their family.
SPEAKER_00:As we uh touched upon in a previous sound off, uh where VR is being superseded by XR, uh, we have to be mindful that it's not a bad thing to grow and to change uh and to embrace uh opportunity. It is that danger of being a Luddite and not really wanting to embrace change that is the more dangerous. Uh, if you don't see change within an industry, then you're seeing an industry that is dying. And we're far from there. But moving on.
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SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Intercard. Uh happy new year to the team there. And we enter the economy side. And one of the pieces of information that came to us uh as we were coming to the end of the year was quite a uh a concerning drop-off in consumer gaming. Now, I'm not saying that people are not playing uh as many or even more consumer gaming uh platforms as they used to, but what I'm saying is that they weren't purchasing as many platforms uh as had been seen in previous years. And the graph kind of indicates that the numbers have fallen back in sales of console systems to the 1995 numbers. Now, before everybody starts running around uh saying the world is uh coming to an end and video gaming is a fad and it's over, what really we're seeing is a transition of technology and application and disposable income. Number one, people are uh not going out and buying the latest and greatest console because there haven't been that many latest and greatest consoles for people to want to purchase, or the ones that they have purchased, uh they wanted to purchase, they've already brought, and that's it. We have a migration across to the handheld sector, the switches have seen phenomenal sales, though the switch to the latest iteration, hasn't seen the big kinds of uh buy ins as they previously had because people have saturation, already made those purchases. We also have a migration in player types. People are playing on PC systems, people are creating their own PC systems to be able uh to play their latest and greatest games at a level of performance that they want, using controllers that they want, they're not dependent uh on console manufacturers, and also people are looking at Steam and cloud-based gaming, and where the traditional uh hardware console warfare between uh Microsoft with the Xbox and with Sony uh with the PlayStation and with Nintendo uh with their Switch, uh it has kind of broken up a bit and people aren't spending as much. They're not spending as much on uh the games because they want to have digital versions rather than physical physical versions, try and say that uh a couple of times. They also are now being very picky on what they're playing. We even started to see a return to retro gaming where people are unhappy with uh dependence on uh having to have cloud-based, constantly updating content, they just wanted a game where they slap the cartridge in and they can jump straight in and play. We've seen a revival, and uh some of the uh later 16-bit and 32-bit consoles from uh the golden ages are now uh changing hands for quite considerable amounts of money uh on the eBay's uh as people uh get a little bit retro nostalgic.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, I mean this is certainly console sales. Uh you know, I think the reason we haven't seen well, there's many reasons, but one of the main reasons we haven't seen new consoles come out is that the the requirement the hardware requirements for these for the you know the new games that are coming out just aren't pushing the boundaries of the existing consoles. Like and and it's only in there's only so much uh you know GPU power that you can put in, only so much CPU power you can put in to these console games that unless there's really gonna be a game that pushes the boundaries and pushes the limits of your PlayStation 5 or of your current Switch 1 versus your Switch 2, uh, there's not gonna be a reason to go out and buy a new console. And there's not gonna be a neat reason to go and create a new console either, unless you're really trying to change the form factor, which is what Nintendo has done very well over the years, is they continue to reinvent the form factor of the console, the gameplay, how you hold the different things. They've just done a good job with that. It's not the same, you know, handheld controller that we've had since the beginning. They continue to change their format and evolve, and that's how they've been able to drive new console sales. And I think that was one of the reasons why Switch 2 didn't sell the same level as Switch 1 because there wasn't a significant difference in the way in your gameplay.
SPEAKER_00:That there's uh we'll talk about this later on, but there is one surprise platform that has actually seen an increase uh in sales. But you're you're spot on, there wasn't enough to drive the uh performance. One of the reasons why um uh let's see, um, some of the Grand Theft Auto uh interest in the next generation, number six in the uh Canon, uh, has been you know pushed to the sides really because it isn't pushing the technology as much as uh its previous incarnations, and that's why it's been delayed a little bit more as they give it a little bit more polish to try and squeeze a little bit more out of uh the consoles it's targeted for. The audience is maturing and changing, and they want a better boom for their buck. Uh, and there's also a sweet spot of how much they're prepared to pay. And one of the issues that we aren't touching upon here, but we touched upon previously, the increase in RAM prices will mean that even current generation consoles will increase in price, even though you know they've already uh been out. We're seeing Xbox uh S's going uh seeing a about a 1 to 2 to 3% increase in price because of the RAM uh problems that we're going through. So all of these things are uh impacting how much that console sales number will decrease this year, 2026, will be fascinating. Moving on, and you know, the decline and the transition. A decline doesn't mean disaster, but sometimes means a transition in buying habits. As we were seeing with the consoles, people were moving uh towards different types of buying habits for their game content. In the retail sector, this Christmas uh and the Black Friday sales definitely indicated that a lot more uh dependency on online purchasing was uh the order of the day. And that means that the retail sector is really navel-gazing, really looking into uh how their future is going to be, how they're going to encourage in audiences not just to attend uh the retail environment, the malls, uh uh the factory malls, all of those venues, but also how to get them to buy stuff while they are there. And that kind of leads into what they're going to anchor these entertainment facilities with, and that falls into our uh our retinue, as it were. But that said, over the Boxing Day, uh, for those of you that aren't familiar, after Christmas Day, there is Boxing Day in the UK, which is seen as a mass buying opportunity. The sales uh come out, lots of discounts, and they didn't see a really massive physical purchase, they saw a massive digital purchase. So we are really coming to the point where the audience has voted with their feet that they would rather use the retail sector as a showroom and that they will use the online facility as their uh purchasing environment. That also means that there will be some department stores that may be available for our business. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Trending in the biz, uh, and we touched upon this uh a little bit in Open and Shut, uh, the brand new opening of a round one facility. Um there's also a little bit of confusion about how new this facility was. Was it an update? Was it a rebranding? And it kind of, while I was doing the research, kind of opened Pandora's box because suddenly this round one that is uh opening in San Diego, uh it has uh a yum. And the yum is a dedicated area of specialist Japanese uh fine food uh areas, uh little unique stores. And the more I looked into that, the more this sounded like Round One Delicious. Um and so I said, Oh, that's a point. I haven't heard anything about Round One Delicious that was meant to have opened up in Los Angeles during 2025, and there's zero information. And I am wondering if our friends uh at round one are experimenting within their own operation with this Yum uh concept, uh, which fundamentally has all of the components that we had seen with uh the Round One Delicious uh press release. Maybe this is going to be rolled out uh in this kind of mix before we see the full dedicated single site offering. That's my speculation on this. I may be reading this wrong.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, no, I've you very well could be accurate there. Is this this is just looks like a rendering here, but it was a rendering. We talked on open and shut about the new location that was opening with the Spotcha coming into it and how they didn't really do a good job with marketing or branding around the sport challenge active play component of round one. But in this rendering, at least, they're at least calling it out the fact that Spocha exists. Um, I don't know, I can't read underneath it that they're explaining what it is, uh, because entertainment. Yeah, well no, I know I know where it is. I'm saying I don't know if it's if if they're explaining to their audience.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, it's it says directly underneath it in the text that you've covered. Oh, it does.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, all right, you can see it. Okay, perfect. Um, so that's good at least, right? But um, but still I'm not convinced that Spok is gonna do well in the US market, uh, especially connected to the round one.
SPEAKER_00:Especially with a giant uh bowling pin outside it. They may think it's a new type of uh bowling experience. As we said in the uh open and shut, it needs uh more definition. Uh and even more definition now if you're going to be throwing in a high-quality Japanese food mall inside your facility. It's getting very confusing, and I really hope that the rebranding team comes out and starts drawing some lines and defining what entertainment and experiences are on offer, going back to our original statement at the beginning. We're going through restructuring and uh the uh experienced divisions of uh many of uh the corporations are now seeing new helms coming in. Uh, we have uh Mattel's experience division, their global toy, but also their experience, their branding, and their licensing. Uh operation is now uh under a new chief executive, and this chief executive has definitely made it very clear in her initial statements where she uh sees the Mattel brand going uh outside of its toy and licensing business. We already had Uno out in the market, which we commented about last year uh in the casino side, and we've also ended uh our 2025 coverage by revealing the uh the new water park project that uh Mattel uh was involved with. There are other major location-based entertainment or location-based experience venues that uh Mattel is involved with, and uh I think this drive of new executive team is kind of an indication of where they're placing their investment.
SPEAKER_01:This is uh she's she's no slouch. I was doing some background on her. Uh she previously, before this, was at uh Netflix for almost seven years as their uh head of consumer products in global e-commerce. And then before that, she was at Disney for I want to say close to another decade, if not longer than that, at Disney. Um in multiple.
SPEAKER_00:It's I'm sorry. Disney Corp, if I'm correct, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Disney Corporate, yeah, corporation, right? So she was the global product, she was the VP of global product management. Um, and so definitely has product, consumer product uh chops. I I do struggle though with her background in experiences and in entertainment. Not that it's necessarily that she doesn't necessarily have that background. I don't like when these two things are blended together. I think that there should be a chief consumer products officer potentially and a chief experiences officer. If they're really trying to get into LBE or LBX, um, then they really need somebody who is focused on that exclusively and not just on um taking products and also uh blending them with experiences.
SPEAKER_00:You're preaching to the choir here. I've had to sit through a number of corporate meetings where a uh licensing and toy individual has told me that they understand the location-based entertainment industry intimately, and if they don't, they can call a friend to tell them. Uh, and usually that ends in tears. You're quite right, you've got to focus on your lane and your expertise. You can have a good team around you, but if you don't understand location-based uh experiences and entertainment, it's a very hard mistress to learn. But we wish her the best of luck and we look forward to seeing how the first, I think the first fire that she will have to put out is what's happening with the Uno uh property in location-based uh or it's competitive socializing, and how also some of the other fires regarding Mattel licenses being deployed in location-based entertainment are either addressed or put out. Another change uh in uh management uh at Sphere Entertainment. We've already touched upon the difficulties and the debt that Sphere is sitting on, how they're trying to write the ship of state, uh, the success that they've seen from their Wizard of Oz performances uh has beat buoyed uh their uh activities and they're now relocating and refitting themselves for their Saudi Arabian business uh uh opportunities, while at the same time they're having to face the fact of what they're going to do regarding the amounting debt that they're sitting on with the sphere entertainment uh operation. And so they have uh dropped in a new. Chief technology officer. And I know a lot of her position will now be uh she's wearing two hats. She's not just uh technology, but she's also uh vice president, and she will have to deal with uh really addressing the financial burden going forth.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, again, great uh pedigree with her. So she was previously at Amazon as the head of live events and immersive experiences for Prime Video for uh eight years and even worked with NFL to create the next generation stats that you see that works with AWS. And so um anyway, it'll be interesting to see what she does here. Also, just by the way, two um it's great to see two executives filled by a you know, filled by women, um, you know, in in really key roles for some, you know, for this going forward. And you know, we have talked about this uh, you know, not necessarily in sound off, but in other instances where you just don't see enough women at the executive and leadership levels in the entertainment and attractions industry. And so it is good to see that there's some shift happening here, at least with these latest two.
SPEAKER_00:I'm I'm happy that uh the industry is uh embracing all talent. I'll leave it at that. Moving on, mergers and acquisitions are plenty. Uh Sony dipped into their vast amounts of money, Sony Pictures, of course, uh, and uh decided to take on the Peanuts brand. They brought the majority, nearly all of the uh uh majority of the brand is now under their uh control. There is still some outstanding agreements uh in place where the peanuts brand is used under a contract. One of those, of course, is with Six Flags with their Camp Snoopy uh uh chain uh within the theme park operation. There is also some other utilizations of the Peanuts brand in location-based entertainment, but I get the feeling that Sony now is going to be the arbiter and the controller of uh of the property going forward. Netflix decided uh to uh uh go through their sack of money and uh coughed up uh quite a considerable amount uh to take control of Ready Player Me. Now, if you're not familiar with ReadyPlayer Me, they are an avatar creations company. They scan you, they create a unique avatar that you can then deploy into your game so you have a unique persona or representation. Uh the company's been working on unique uh interface or custom creations for avatars that can be dropped into the Fortnites into various games. For Netflix to do this, kind of tells you that their investment in their games division is going to increase. And uh it's no secret that Netflix is looking at location-based entertainment. We will touch upon that in a couple of minutes, but they're also looking at their games division that will be creating a lot of streamed content based upon their very large property bank.
SPEAKER_01:This is a really interesting acquisition. I I oh man, I want to be in the room. I want to know what's what discussions are happening here about where they see this being deployed, not only just in their gaming division, but I can see some actual applications to digital applications of this in their location-based entertainment facilities that then carries over to their gaming uh game division and uh you know having just a more broader digital presence within the Netflix ecosystem.
SPEAKER_00:I've worked on a number of projects where we scanned individuals uh and then created an avatar of them and then tried to deploy that avatar into the games that they were playing in the facilities. At the time we were using very clunky technology and it was very difficult, and it wasn't where it is now. The ability to do a quick scan, drop the person's visage uh and details into the game experience so they can then have a takeaway that they can use on their home game uh application is obvious. You know, uh it's what we've all been striving for. I just hope that the technologists at Netflix are on that level, uh, that they can see that it isn't just about consumer gaming, but it's also about location experiences. Acquisitions again, uh 360 park management have now taken control of uh uh Wonderland amusement parks uh in Texas. Uh that's about um 30 rides that they've uh got their hands on. It's quite I hadn't really focused that much on Wonderland Amusement Park because it's one of those uh legacy parks. You know, here we go again talking about a part that uh was branded uh in 1967, you know, around the time I was born. Uh and the you know, this this has been a regional popular venue. It's had some love put in it, some investment, but now this latest acquisition means that it can be brought up to standards to compete in that very crowded Texas market.
SPEAKER_01:I hope so anyway, right? I mean, I'm not convinced that 360 Parks is going to do anything different, but uh yeah, other than just bring, you know, hopefully that does bring in some capital and bring in some love for it. But yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It would be uh unusual to uh to enter into an acquisition like this and not put some love into it. Just saying. Uh an interesting appearance on the uh the new uh the new developers of the next top golf. Uh I see this a lot in uh press and marketing reports last year where someone said they're opening a facility that hoped to be the top golf for XYZ. Well, Sandlot uh Social is by its name is a competitive socializing operation. They are just uh going to be opening up uh their 95th uh facility based. Uh this the 95th facility is in Kansas. And from the press release, they're branding themselves as the top golf for baseball. Now, beer, eat, and batting may be an interesting terminology, but when I was doing some digging into this, I just couldn't get a handle on what they've achieved uh up until this point. This kind of appeared from nowhere. I'm not sure how how their other 94 facilities are doing or what they bring to the table.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I think I want to clarify one thing because I don't I I do not think that they I think this is a brand new concept. Yes. And and so I think when you're seeing 95th, it's it's opening up at the night at 95th in Quivira and just lost in communication. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think that's what it is. Thank God. I've never heard of these guys. There's no way they have 95 locations, and I've never heard of them one bit.
SPEAKER_00:I blame the holidays obviously too much punch uh during the holidays. So when I was filling out the press, uh when I was uh reviewing the press release, I was jumping around the brand new concept and 95th. You've clarified it, it's 95th location. Uh the street location is 95th. So let me backtrack and be a little bit more correct. It is a competitive socializing idea, it is brand new, it is bringing baseball, uh, and they're trying to apply a sandbox uh mantra to this. I would argue that this is going to go directly up against uh home run dugout uh and all of the other venues in that sector. Uh, and again, from the research I did on the press release, bar the mistake on the uh on the uh number of facilities, the biggest thing that jumped out to me at the moment was I couldn't see what was the top golf element that they were hoping to apply. I was seeing something that looked very similar to other approaches to a batting cage uh with drinks and shareable food approach. Or hopefully I didn't make another mistake there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, just in reading a little bit here briefly, and you've obviously done significantly more research than I have here. Um, they do have a full bar and dining area, and this is where I think we don't go wrong, frankly. But their full bar and dining area will see 250 people with a Vegas style sportsbook screen that runs the length of the bar. And you know what, frankly, like that's that will be a mistake. Um, that's one of the areas. I mean, we would see this with Top Golf. We saw this with Atomic that was created in Vegas. They overbuilt their F B area. Uh, we saw this with pinstripes, uh, they overbuilt their FB and underbuilt their entertainment. And so, you know, look, if it's going to be a sports bar with a big sports book area and whatever, and you're gonna hope to drive in the 250 people, if you have 150 people in there, it's still gonna feel empty. Um, and so it is just too big of a dining facility area, even if the rest of the entertainment experience is good.
SPEAKER_00:I would hazard a guess that, especially from the press release and all of that, that this is a hospitality and dining specialist team that is trying to add an entertainment component to this. So they've led with the uh the beer and the eats, and they're they've tried to follow up with the batting. Again, uh early days, a lot of information, a lot of dust needs to settle. We need to see this facility open, and I will hold a little bit of my powder and make sure my information is a little bit more up to date when they throw their doors open soon.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I will say one more quick thing here because this is important around naming and branding. They clearly did not do their research. Well, I like the concept Sandlot Social, I actually think that's a really interesting name. There is a company already called Sandlot Social, and they sell retail um or to uh to distributors a fun pop-up mini game course. Uh they they sell like basically mini games that you can buy to put in your backyard or whatever or rent out. And so already there's a Sandlot Social and in Kansas City itself. I know this isn't Kansas City, but this is in Kansas. There's a Sandlot Social um social club, which is a marketing agency. So if you Google Sandlot Social, even if you Google Sandlot Social Kansas, you are seeing other things before you see this uh entertainment.
SPEAKER_00:That that's a rookie mistake. That's a rookie mistake.
SPEAKER_01:It's a rookie mistake.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I have to spend my time looking at new concepts, and you know, if I I have to do the multi-level searches, both Google uh as well as even Bing still nowadays, as well as uh uh looking at uh other sources for research information. If you can't, if you're gonna go through the expense of having Sandlot social and you you are not positioning yourself against the others, then you've got problems. But we will wait and see. Uh not a new entrant, but a company that is uh repositioning itself and was brought to my attention again. Thank you to uh our sources. Game Room is a Scandinavian-based uh operator of amusement, and they have the turnkey solution. You know, we've talked about this where you have a kind of near-if zero attendant uh facility. Everything is done by uh either an app or a uh kiosk uh operation. The company has cut its teeth on putting amusement uh rooms or game rooms on uh ships, uh number of the ferries in the Scandinavian uh territory, which is interesting. Cruise line ships with a standalone arcade. When a machine breaks on one of those ships, it takes a while for the maintenance team to come out and fix it. Uh but here I do believe that it is the Scandinavian mentality that has made it easier for them to operate uh low attendant uh systems. Uh I was reading a post from one of their executives who was actually being very polite about some vandalism that they had suffered on one of their machines. And uh, you know, it was clear that their mentality, this kind of approach I don't think would work in uh Kansas or in Croydon or in uh London or in Connecticut. So uh I I would recommend uh to follow this operation, but from the number of facilities that they have and their growth in trying to populate uh attendantless machines, it kind of gives us a nice metric to put into uh the the Taurus of Pain that uh I'm going to be relying on a lot more uh for our presentations. And as you can see, uh where Game Room fits, uh it is one of the few that has a cruise line entity as well as a hospitality, as well as one that's going to have to be added to this Taurus, a retail component to this. But again, uh it's interesting to see uh far afield from our European, UK uh brethren, uh also now seeing the Scandinavian market growing in that approach. And from the layout of uh the facilities that I was looking at, very impressive. I just wonder how they're going to survive uh uh being attendantless, so we put it that way. We've been hearing a lot about this. I I actually come from a background where I used to work with Atari um when I was uh Infograms, and the Atari brand has become a licensing magnet. It has licensed uh its classic amusement products that it still uh retains, as well as its classic uh video games. There's been a talk uh for a long time, even when uh uh Infograms acquired the Atari uh operation and uh rebranded and redeveloped itself as Atari. We were always talking about creating an arcade or a location base, or in this particular case, a hotel based upon uh the brand. It's been bouncing around this concept for a uh a number of times, and surprise, surprise, a new press release popped up just before the end of the year uh saying that uh a new group of individuals was looking at a raise of about uh 35 million. They said between 35 and 40, I think they're actually uh just going for 35 uh as a standard uh payment. They're gonna open a flagship location in Phoenix, it's going to be part hotel, part social entertainment, part entertainment uh environment, you know, rendering of plenty, lots of Atari logos everywhere, lots of hype. They're aiming for 2028. I'm going to take a bet and say, I don't think they're going to make 2028.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I don't think they're going to make 2028. I mean, while I never I don't know how long it takes to build a hotel, I do know how long it takes to raise capital. And the fact that they haven't even they don't even have their capital fully committed yet, and they're already announcing an opening date is premature. So uh look, this has been something that's been discussed about in the Phoenix market for a long time. I'm here in the Phoenix market. I was looking forward to it like three years ago when it was first, you know, supposed to open three years ago, and they, you know, and so now uh or even longer ago, maybe, but uh it's been it's been on the radar in Phoenix for a long time. I would love to see it actually come to fruition, but we are a ways out.
SPEAKER_00:Uh I'm sure the same uh is said of the people in Las Vegas who are waiting on the uh Atari casino concept that uh was uh muted eight years ago. So we we've been here before. Uh I don't want to poo-poo this because all it takes is for one investment team to finally uh pony up and uh things start to move. But again, I I will err on skepticism of where we are at this point in time, especially the quality of some of those renderings uh in the press announcement looked a little bit rushed uh and they didn't push the Atari brand as much as I was hoping. But we will see, and if we get more information on this, we'll bring it to you. Fitting into the Taurus, just if they did actually develop it, it would be a fascinating positioning because it would be a resort hotel, hospitality, location-based entertainment property. And if they could get the ball rolling with that IP, I think it could be a very strong powerhouse. But getting going is always the hardest part of this process. We touched upon this in open and shut. Uh, we have touched upon this many times in sound off. Six is the uh social uh cricket system, uh, the projection cricket uh platform supplied by our friends at Batfast, uh linked in with uh a social entertainment bar and snack environment, had rolled out 16 facilities, had managed to break uh the important part of uh opening in the US marketplace, had been on a trajectory uh of reinvestment and redevelopment. We were skeptical. We had our concerns that this single entertainment offering uh might not be suitable in its current conjoin uh to suit the market. We had also brought to the attention uh of Moonshot that was the taking of one of the previously owned Sixes facilities in Westfields in London and turning it into a baseball uh uh environment, uh, mainly by changing the software and the ball uh and the bat uh and throwing in a lot more amusement, surprise, surprise. So it was kind of showing us that there was a concern. Then there was rumors on the wire that one of the US sites uh was in trouble, and there was rumors that one of the UK sites was in trouble. There was a whole confused uh situation over the Tobago opening that we touched upon. Um he opened in the shot. We didn't really know where this fitted in. It had a separate website, all of this. Well, anyway, surprise, surprise, sixes called in administration. Uh, and as soon as they called in administration, one of their facilities closed instantly in the UK, the Wandsworth site. Um, but the rest of the facilities managed to keep open uh during uh the holiday period, thankfully, because of all of the bookings uh for the uh entertainment series. The management, the administration team now that's in place is being very bullish. They feel uh that they were suffering challenging trading conditions, why the it had to fall into administration, but they feel that they can control this and that they're going to build and keep these facilities open and uh revitalize that. I I'm not quite sure uh where that fits into the marketplace, but that's something that we need uh to think about.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned uh on Open and Shut, not surprised that they have uh that they have gone into administration, unfortunately. Um, you know, never like to see that happen necessarily for any particular concept. Um, but this is not surprising at all. Social cricket just didn't catch on, especially here in the US. And uh I also mentioned the Grandscapes location closed a good uh at least six months ago um in Dallas, and there's no reason why they should have shut down. Uh Other than the fact that their model just didn't work. And so it's uh it's too bad and you know hope that things uh go well uh you know with their moonshot concept.
SPEAKER_00:We will have to wait and see how they uh move forward from this point. Uh please forgive the new addition to uh the uh presentation team here, but I am uh at home with family and they are making it very clear that uh uh I'm going to need to move on from this soon. Dreamscape, uh we had touched upon them. They were one of the ambitious uh VR uh arena scale uh operations right at the beginning of the first flush of uh aspirations of what uh VR in location-based entertainment was going to offer. It was the void, it was Dreamscape. Dreamscape raised a large amount of money from the film industry, including the likes of Steven Spielberg, uh, towards rolling out a multitude of venues. They really only opened a handful of sites. Their Los Angeles site had closed recently, uh sorry, 2024, where their um site in Geneva now has closed, and we're at a stage now where there's only the uh Riad facility that's still operational. Um what happens next is uh going to be interesting, but as we know, Dreamscape has moved or pivoted into the educational side.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. All right, well, coming up after the quick break, we will continue with the trends. Allen 1 has something for every venue in arcade floor that will delight your guests. Each game is also enhanced majorly east for it. Free app attracts player top scores and brings guests back to your venue for more. Visit Allendax1.com to learn more. That's AllenDax1.com.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Alan. And just to the uh last part of uh our coverage, and uh we're looking at really the crystal ball uh as it is for the end of the year. Uh and one of those crystal balls uh that we're going to be uh having to consider is the cruise line industry, which looks like it's going to be a major part of our business, as we touched upon earlier with uh our friends at Game Room.
SPEAKER_01:Um would 100% agree, and uh that's that the cruise I would say seeing more amusement, more entertainment, adding to cruise lines is absolutely going to be uh a key trend this year.
SPEAKER_00:Uh next we're uh I I like to call it the VR uh VR's Moment of uh Dreamcast. Uh if you're not familiar with the Dreamcast console, that was a very big hyped console from Sega that they thought they were going to change the world, it was going to be ubiquitous, everybody was going to be uh utilizing it, it was going to cross over into many markets, and it was sort of it became a niche. It achieved sales, but it didn't achieve any of the hype that it was uh hoped for, and Sega had to back away. And I get the feeling that from Meta's point of view, this may be their dreamcast moment uh of realization. I wouldn't be surprised during uh this year that we hear a major restructuring of Meta's reality labs and maybe a pivot away from the quest and the VR brand, just to focus on the business of AI uh and smart glass business where they can actually see a revenue. But that you know that repeats a little bit of what we've been touching upon at the end of last year. The uh move away from virtual reality towards uh mixed reality. We've touched upon this as a subject that we've started to see. I think we'll see a lot more of this uh this year. One of the aspects is we're going to see new headsets coming in from uh certain manufacturers which are focused heavily on their mixed reality components. So you can't really hide from utilizing that, but it will still mean that VR will be a component of this, it will just be with a mixed reality flavor. Uh we touched upon at the beginning uh about the experiential uh against the entertainment for LBE. Uh, one of these uh slides that was passed on to me that I feel really illustrates this is the defining of the location-based entertainment experience against the story XR experience and how you can have that projected environment and drive people through uh an interactive element, as we saw with the Minecraft experiences that were popping up all over the place, alongside what we're seeing with the large-scale uh location experience VR systems that are offering an adventure rather than just blasting zombies and they're offering a large audience uh uh attraction. This convergence will play a much bigger part in the XR uh uh deployment into the uh 2026 market.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the only thing I'll add here is that I also think that this is only going to continue into 27, 28, uh, these story-led XR experiences, especially as the ability for the story and for the physical and you know, or I'll call the digital, right? The digital and physical space to evolve and change and personalize based on AI as well. Um, it it it we're I think AI infused into XR in 2026 is too soon, but I think we're going to continue to see more and more story-led personalized XR experiences into the future.
SPEAKER_00:Agreed. Uh the social equation, as I call it, uh, the appearance more of uh social influencers, uh, and uh, so we say the social uh multifaceted media experience, interlocation-based uh entertainment, uh led by the success of Beastland, even though it was a very short period of time uh in Saudi that this uh venue operated, it did uh galvanize a lot of interest, it did focus a lot of other influencers towards what they could do to be involved in the fidgetal, in uh the uh landscape of actually having a presence of bricks and mortar rather than just being uh a YouTube celebrity. The changes that are impacting YouTube and how influencers make their money will also galvanize them to look towards this approach.
SPEAKER_01:This is the transmedia, uh, and maybe you have this in your one of your later predictions, but this is this is the transmedia path, and we're seeing it for YouTube stars, just in the same way that we've seen it now for uh for consumer brands, Mattel, Hasbro, etc. And then obviously the uh the the media brands like Netflix moving in television. Transmedia is the next shift as well.
SPEAKER_00:Agreed. Then we have uh the licensing, as you said. Transmedia, yes. Transmedia. Um what what can we say? Uh it's been uh a year previously of uh developments, the the whole Netflix house situation, along with Netflix's uh increased transmedia presence, uh, has got everybody thinking about this. Nintendo may have started it, but uh Netflix will be pushing forward this, and I'm led to believe that many other uh major brands and major studios are now looking at having a facility-based operation model. This is very reminiscent of uh when I was working at Disney, what we saw happen with Disney Quest and their needs to get into this, but I think this time the technology has matured enough that this is going to really happen and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Then the last two really are uh you know watch words, uh uh concern elements. We're seeing a major downturn in department stores. Where I was just hearing about Bath and Beyond uh falling into uh another administrative uh situation regarding their finances. Uh, those venues, these department stores that uh fall by the waysides, are venues that we can utilize for location-based entertainment. And I know that the the mall and the retail sector are looking at entertainment and leisure entertainment facilities as anchors to repurpose these sites. You know, one day you're a cons uh department store, the next day uh you're a um round one bowling uh and uh amusement facility. It's not as easy as that, uh, and there's a lot of thought to go into that, but it does mean that rather than having to build unique locations at a higher expense, we can now populate uh existing properties. But again, this is something that we need to be mindful of going forward in the next couple of months. And then finally, really, it's the hard times uh across the hospitality sector uh as well as other sectors, and we will need to be mindful of what happens in the next couple of months regarding this. We've seen problems in Las Vegas, and we're going to be hearing a lot more about those in the next couple of months. Uh, there's some serious issues regarding the fall-off of tourism and also just the lack of spend that's taking place in Vegas. Indeed. Yeah, someone also has an opinion about that. The just to remind our audience that uh in June we have the Augmented World Expo, which has a location-based entertainment component, which uh we'll be talking a lot more about as we get closer to that. But please one to mark in your calendar, and if you want to be involved, please uh get in contact with us. And I just leave me, uh me and Dante to wish you all uh a very happy new year. Uh 2026 is going to be great, and a lot of things are going to be happening. Uh, and if you have any information about those happenings, you can uh look me up on uh my LinkedIn and pass on information via our email. We'll keep it secret if you need to, keep it confidential, and also please make sure that you're getting your stinger reports as well as uh the latest uh issues of the entertainment social arena that will be coming out soon.
SPEAKER_01:Perfect. All right, Kevin. Well, you have a good evening with your family. Enjoy the festivities, and uh we'll see you on the next one.
SPEAKER_00:Best to you. See you next time.
