Sound Off #119 - Competitive Socializing Saturation, D&B Gambling? & more!

Sponsored by Intercard!

On this week's show we  discuss how competitive socializing is hitting a saturation point, and lay out why single-activity venues need a deeper entertainment mix to earn repeat visits. We also track the fast-moving business and tech signals reshaping location-based entertainment, from legal risk to VR pricing to AR smart glasses partnerships. 

• phase one competitive socializing saturation and the risk of one-and-done venues 
• why repeat visitation depends on progression and variety not just food and beverage 
• three key audiences for competitive socializing and how they behave 
• corporate and private hire as the stabilizing revenue engine and the outbound sales gap 
• IAAPA expo expansion pressure and how exhibitors decide where to invest 
• Dave & Busters legal claim in South Carolina and the skill versus chance debate 
• Sixes operating under administration and what a buyer would really inherit 
• Apple C-suite change as a signal for hardware strategy and XR expectations 
• Meta headset price hikes and what it means for commercial VR operators 
• Lane7 acquisition of Par 59 and what rebranding could mean 
• Topgolf’s new CEO doing facility visits and leading through listening 
• game IP films at CinemaCon and the upside for barcades and arcades 
• Sandbox VR Webby Award and the role of major IP partners 
• bowling projection mapping with AI scoring and what Bowl Expo may bring 
• gamification layers for trampolines climbing and cruise ship entertainment 
• Snap and Qualcomm partnership plus Atari interactive floor game packs 

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Transcript

Cold Open And Welcome

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Are you on the edge of your seat? Because we're looking at the covering today's latest trends in location-based game. Brought to you by the LBX Collective, your community collective. All right, everyone. Let's buckle up.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

All right. Well, welcome everybody to Sound Off with Kevin Williams. This is episode number 119 for April 28th, 2026. Kevin, my friend, how are you doing? I'm doing well, Brandon. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. And so for this week, how are you going to change my mind?

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Well, uh, you know, as of time of recording, I've just uh come from my round table talking about competitive socializing. And, you know, the topic was argued uh that you know we are at a saturation point. There is phase one, and uh, you know, I'll I'll define this, phase one competitive socializing venues, usually venues with a single entertainment uh experience, be they a flight club or a pot shack, uh, have now populated themselves in a number of localities and sit next door to a number of localities. Uh, if you look at a map that I had to generate of just a square mile around a particular group, uh, you know, it is saturated. Uh, you know, there's one of all, and not all of them are doing fantastically, and some of them isn't because the idea is uh uh a problem with their audience, it's just that sometimes a single entertainment venue is a one and done, no matter how you peel it. And if you don't have a secondary entertainment or a tertiary entertainment component to your mix, you're vulnerable.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah, I would say that andor your entertainment isn't compelling enough to drive repeat visitation, you know, or does it have ways to level up or improve upon what you did the last time? If your experience going to throw darts at a dartboard at flight club is going to be effectively the same experience the next time you go, even with it's maybe a different group of friends or the same group of friends, why am I going to go to Flight Club versus trying F1 down the street or putt shack or something else? Right. And so this is the issue when you you know you could have a really great vibe, you have you could have really great FB, but if your entertainment mix is one single entertainment, then I'm only making a decision to come back in because I really had a good food experience, FB experience. And then you're effectively a restaurant with some mediocre entertainment layered in.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

We have to be really careful when looking, especially in London at competitive socializing, there are three audiences that we're catering for. There is the corporate and private group, and those individuals don't usually have a lot of say other than when their entertainment organizer says, right, guys, we're going to have the uh company meeting at either that dance place or that Formula One place or that pool table place or that mini golf place. You don't, you know, no matter how good your branding and how good your positioning is, you're being thrown to the wolves there. Number two, hopefully the repeat visitation. I they had such a good time when they came with the corporate group that they're going to come with their date or they're going to come with uh their mates uh separately of a corporate hire. And then there's the third, the social media warrior that says, I want a good time, what entertainment is available for us uh to go out uh and do around here that we haven't done before. Those are totally different audience demographics to an FEC, which is hoping that the soccer mom is going to be doing uh a decent bit of online searching supported by uh the guardians, the kids, uh, and or that they're going to be driven to a facility by that trip advisor or by where Timmy had his last party. That really does change the demographics of what competitive socializing is. And uh when I do a retrospective of what happened at the um London Experience Week, uh I'll try and give a little bit more of a snapshot into where we see phase two of competitive socializing going.

Corporate Bookings Drive Repeat Visits

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head with the second audience group, which is the corporate corporate sales, which obviously this is the competitive socializing version of an FEC's birthday parties. You know, you have a birthday party, and you know, some kid is invited to a birthday party, and the kid had a ton of fun and tells his mom or his dad, and then they get to go back to the FEC or the trampoline park or whatever it might be because they had a fantastic birthday party. The same thing could be said of a group event that's being put on at one of these events, and I'm shocked at how little direct outbound sales so many of these brands do to corporate parties to really increase corporate parties. We've been in so many of these locations, and they've been groups of friends, they have been some couple of individuals on dates, uh, but we have not seen, at least I have not seen in the ones that I visited, a large number of corporate groups having large events or even small events at these facilities. And I think that's a huge miss for them because that will be the salvation ultimately of the single uh entertainment location.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

I was lucky enough when we were out in Vegas to see uh corporate entertaining at the F1 arcade when I actually visited. And that was just a group of about 14 or 15 individuals. I've seen it at many other venues, and I keep a very close tap on that, especially here in the City of London. Uh, if you look at the corporate entertaining, now that they're back in the office, they uh a lot of these uh companies are working very hard at you know Friday entertainments, end-of-the-month entertainments, which is bolstering the competitive socializing model from a uh a UK point, that's a London point of view. But it is that uh familiar across all of the country, is that familiar across all of the territories? No. But I tell you now, one job you're going to see really important across all of the entertainment sector is going to be the corporate and private hire manager uh supported by AI. Indeed.

Break And Sponsor Message

SPEAKER_00 6:43

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IAPA Expo Spending And Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Thank you for that. And let's jump in with a little bit of trending economy news. And we have come to an impasse. Uh, I talked about the UK um US situation last sound off. And, you know, a lot of people have been bending my ear about whether they're going to be jumping on a plane going to uh Ayalpa Orlando, which is concerning. Uh, but at the same respects, we are seeing some operations saying that they're going to double down on their investment in September on uh Ialpa London. And I'll say it now, Ayalpa London ain't a cheap show uh uh by any uh stretch of the imagination, and it also comes with a lot of restrictions regarding uh the price of uh private hire uh in the local competitive socializing market for the entertaining. It also comes with restrictions of shipping and stuff like that. So you're not hiding from the expense, it's just that you're doubling down. So in a couple of weeks' time, we will have Ialpa Asia uh that will be uh dominating uh our viewing, and then for September, uh ILPA Europe in London will be the big hotness, and then the argument goes will that hotness continue until November when everybody jumps on uh transatlantic uh at the oil prices that there will be at that point of time, the hotel uh costs, as well as loitering in the background. And I'm not gonna go into too much here, but there is also a little shadow hanging over our IALPA Orlando regarding its new format of its show flora, uh floor layer.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah. Well, I mean, this is an issue that IAPA is going to have to deal with in general, as they add this next year in 2027, really two new expos. And yes, one of them was supposed to happen this year, the expo in the Middle East, uh, but uh but it the you know, the EMI region basically. Um, but they obviously had to cancel that and or postpone it, excuse me, postponed until next year. Um, but then they're off they're launching a Latin American expo as well. And this is a really difficult place that many exhibitors have to like that they find themselves in because they have to make a decision on where they're going to put their investment. Do they have to go to all of the expos in order to maintain brand presence? Are they going to pick just a few key markets? It really depends. There are you know international for you know international manufacturers and suppliers that work with customers across the world and they feel like they now have just two extra expenses added to their marketing and and trade show budget for 2027 and beyond.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

And as some uh well-placed supporters and sponsors of IALPA are finding out that uh their loyalty to going to every opening of an ILPA show and having a presence there doesn't also buy them uh uh a certain level of respect. I'm saying that we're all in danger field at the moment. The uh the issue is that some uh some people that have been stuck in a certain position at IAPA or Landa have been moved, and no matter how much screaming and shouting they're doing, uh you know, they're finding that they're uh no better off than a newbie. But again, from the London perspective, uh it could mean that we become a three-show event for some companies where they will double down on three of the five uh events that they could actually double down on.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

To the Biz, and we woke up a couple of days ago to a federal court ruling, well not ruling, sorry, uh issuing uh by a group of advocates uh towards uh claiming that the Dave and Busters in South Carolina or uh the catchment of South Carolina, those Dave Busters were breaking uh a particular statute they had uh against gambling, and they were actually uh entering into illegal gambling by the way that the machines were operated within this facility. It is complicated the argument. Uh South Carolina has slight uh changes to their interpretation of gambling, and this does throw open the doors of uh skill gaming against chance gaming and being encouraged down a particular path to play again with the uh false or accurate perception that you're going to win something. All this means is that we've got a legal problem, just to add to David Buster's woes, as if they needed that, but also from an industry point of view, we in the amusement industry need to stand back and see how this plays out, or if this is the beginning of the kiddie casino argument that many have been relating uh over the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Well, and my question here, and without knowing, without obviously having read the filing. Is this is is well fair. Uh, but is this is this related to just the standard like arcade and redemption model? Or is this related to the partnership that they have with Lucra and their place it um you know betting feature where customers can come in, bet their peers on how well they uh play, can play skee ball, they can do micro betting on the different results that they might have while they're playing head-to-head with their friends.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

I didn't see anything about Lucra at all. I haven't heard anything about Lucre uh since the last time we talked about it uh in sound off. Uh, but uh this was specifically worded at the playing of uh skill games.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah. Well, and just we may not have heard of Lucra because I think Lucra, the name anyway, the brand has moved into the to the background because they've branded that app, uh, that that rewards embedding app uh place it, P-L-A-Y-C-E.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

It's and I haven't heard about that either for quite some time.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yeah, and maybe they're just trying to keep that under wraps because it didn't, it kind of you know landed like a you know with a soft thud when they first rolled it out. So it may be that they're trying to reevaluate it, but I was just curious if this was related to that or just the standard redemption model.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Standard redemption model as it is applied within the South Carolina catchment. I didn't see anything all uh talking about the app uh ability there, it was all talking about actually presence, uh though again I may have nodded off during uh one of the pages of the document. Uh and if someone has uh gone into more detail than me, I know one particular individual in our industry that will have gone through this with a fine toothco. He's an advisor to the Trade Association on gaming and gambling and such like, and uh I'll I'll try and speak to Tony at some point. The the issue for me here, just going back to the Lucre situation, I get the feeling that they were part of the previous management. Uh, so they were around the time of the social base and also the other aspirations that they had, uh, and that kind of, as you say, soft thud with flies uh buzzing around it. And I'm not sure if there's a budget there to go back and re-energize something that would prove contentious under uh current conditions, let alone these kind of conditions.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Moving on, and uh interesting, we touched upon this in open and shut. Uh the zombie facility, as I like to nickname it. Uh people pointed out to me, and I saw with my own eyes, that not all sixes are closed. Uh, of the 15 or 16 uh sixes venues and equivalents, uh, 14 of them are still operational. That includes the Moonshot baseball uh experience in White City. And the reason why they're still operational is because they're operating under administration. So, yes, the uh the operation fell uh into bankruptcy and administration. The administrator has the capability if the landlords uh of those uh venues are pliable to the idea of we have a buyer in the background and everything's going to be hunky-dory, and you know, this is just a bump in the speed, uh, the speed boat. So we hit a little bit of choppy water. This is the argument that was given to many companies that were involved with immersive game box when they had their uh situation, but they kept on operating uh and then were acquired. And our sources are telling us stack of Bibles, promising everything that there is waiting in the uh the shadows, uh, a buyer of the Sixes chain, including the Moonshot chain, uh one facility as it is, that will take this on board and push it into a new stratosphere of success.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Oh, well, you know, that's uh that is a uh new stratosphere for success, is uh maybe a bit of a reach, but uh we'll see how it all shakes out.

Apple Leadership Shift And XR Reality

SPEAKER_01 16:54

I am very interested who would put their hand in their pocket and buy this, these 14 chains. And I would be very interested to see how the relationship with Batfast would have to be re-engineered by the new owners because there was uh a very unique relationship between Batfast, the developers of the projection, ball launching, cricket system, and baseball system, and these venues. Uh, but the big one for me is uh how much money is gonna cost you to uh take on what I know what the previous management will claim is a fantastic success. The reality speaks for itself. Yeah, moving on and a little bit out of our bully wick, but still some cogents. You know, I wake up to the news that uh finally uh Tim Apple, sorry, Tim Cook, is uh moving on, and he's gonna do that in September. So this kind of validates my crystal ball gazing for the beginning of this year that this is just going to be a year of corporate uh repositioning and C-suite changes of a high magnitude. And then, you know, I am confronted with John, who I've actually met and uh dealt with uh under another life, which was when I was working in the commercial and location-based virtual reality business back in the 90s. There were a number of companies that uh were developing virtual reality headsets for the commercial market aerospace uh military simulation visim sector. Uh, and one of those companies was virtual research, well known. And John was a developer uh and designer at uh virtual research with a long background working on VR commercial headsets. He left uh in about 2001 to go and work with Apple and then disappeared as he got consumed into the Apple machine. Uh but he was very instrumental uh with his last position as president of hardware and engineering to work on the Apple Vision Pro. Now, you know, the uh, shall we say the consumer VR community have opened bottles of champagne and said, great, one of us is joining Apple. When in reality, I think John may have a lot more visibility of regarding the viability and the reality of VR and head-mounted uh display systems uh as a means of keeping a trillion dollar uh operation uh bringing in the big numbers, if I can say that. All I'm trying to point to is uh I don't think we'll be seeing him jumping up and down and releasing an Apple Vision Pro 2 uh any quicker than would have been planned under Tim's tutelage. And I wouldn't be surprised if the form factor of the AI smart glasses that Apple are rumored to be working on, and he would be very aware of, may not get pushed back and re-accessed now that he has the controls of the lever of this super tanker of a corporation.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

This yeah, this was an interesting uh one when I first heard about it, again, just recently in the last few days as of the as of this recording. Um, but it the it it does signal anyway, at least the direction the board believes that Apple should continue to move into, which is it's always been their strength, which is hardware, uh, and and hardware and design.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Um and and maybe he didn't come from that background, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

And you know, I mean they have obviously become much more than that. Uh, wouldn't call them because they don't have their own IP, I wouldn't call them a transmedia organization to some extent. Um, but they are in the media business. Um, they are creating movies and licensing movies, and you know, obviously have their own streaming service, and uh they've been in the music streaming service for decades now. Um, and to find and to bring somebody up who is on the hardware side, I think is a clear signal where they intend to go in the next 10 to 20 years as far as uh their future growth is concerned.

Meta Raises Prices And VR Reprices

SPEAKER_01 21:09

And the individual they've gone for is very young uh in the in compared comparison to the other C-suites there, who some people recognize from the slick corporate and was wondering why they didn't pick one of those telegential individuals. The understanding is Tim was picked by Steve Jobs, and we would argue that this was a period where Steve may have not been on his A game. No insults to what Tim has achieved. He has done what every investor dreams of, which is taking a you know million dollar corporation corporation that was moving into a billion dollar corporation and turned it into a trillion dollar corporation. Uh, I wonder if John will have to uh achieve in the next 10 years a Godzilla amount of Google S amount of uh profitability, or is this a Period where um Apple reflects on its future and how the consumer consumes, and maybe consolidation is the trick. Maybe uh that engineering background could produce the next iPhone. Interesting times ahead. Moving on, and a company that is running away from its VR investments, uh, though uh contrary to public uh public knowledge, they still claim to have a foot in that door. The the shoes are dropping, uh, how many of us had expected as soon as the taps were turned off of the uh gravy train. I'm mixing the metaphors there. Uh the issue is that um, oh dear, the price of the hardware's going up. Uh, we're not subsidizing it anymore. How can we spin that? We will claim that the uh AI revolution that our parent company has created has started to eat into the availability of certain components and the increase of prices. So we have to raise the price. I'm surprised they haven't thrown the term tariff into uh the reason why they had to raise the price. Uh, this is for most a hundred dollar increase in price. Be prepared for a discounting uh middle of the year, and then when the discounting ends, that the price goes up even a little bit more. This is the position now that uh Meta is clearly in, where if they're going to stay in VR, it's gonna have to pay its way, and if they're gonna stay in VR, it has to be under their terms. We have the valve uh uh steam frame coming, which will be in the$800 to$900 price point, we think. And what this means is that when Meta releases their next headset, if they even do in the short term, uh the uh expected Quest 4, don't expect it to be a$250 system, expect it to be a$700 system. And this will change how people perceive consumer VR and hopefully allow us in the commercial VR sector to embrace quality rather than cost effectiveness.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Absolutely. I think this makes complete sense for them. If you know they they were going, I think, for a mass consumer market. Clearly, there is not a mass consumer market for uh uh home-based VR. And so why not increase the price for those who really want it? Uh, you know, the ones who really do want the VR will pay the extra$100 or will pay the extra$300 if this is really what they want. So they might as well extract as much as possible from the target market that they have to stay focused on now since the broader consumer market just doesn't exist. And you know, this is uh this is a tough, this is a tough change for those who have built their their location-based VR system around the MetaQuest, uh, versus the Pico, for example. And so this is obviously now really changes uh really changes the economics for those potential facilities.

Lane7 Buys Par 59 Venues

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Those ones that have based their, you know, uh everybody knows my my feelings about using the meta technology in the commercial sector, uh and I build that on you know hardened lessons learned. All of those now that uh have got a meta system that's about to bribe because of their commercial software uh support going away, uh as well as other aspects going away, um, you know, they're gonna have to make a hard decision. And I don't think running to PICA will be the solution for some of them because they already rushed to the bottom, and as we've said before, it's really difficult to try and raise yourself if you've made it to the floor. Uh acquisitions going on, uh, and uh lane seven has you know positioned itself with its lane seven chain, which is one of the first of the competitive socializing boutique bowling uh approaches that started the ball rolling, pardon the pun. Uh, we have the level X, which is kind of the high-end arcade uh competitive socializing environment. We have Gutter Ball, which is much more of a boutique bowling-centric environment, and we have ML7, which takes uh the uh you know the bowling and the mixed-use leisure entertainment to a new level. Now, added to that is the acquisition of PAR 52, a chain of two, very well appointed competitive socializing venues in Cardiff and Bristol. They are heavy on their competitive socializing mini golf, they're very heavy also on their social entertainment. Some of these venues have the shuffleboards, some of these have uh the augmented reality darts, but in a package that has proven popular. Lane seven's coming along, uh, a deal has been done. I can't tell you the number. It's still, well, it's not embargoed, but it is not for public consumption. But the owners of uh this operation uh are very happy to move on now after their two venues have proven themselves a very strong success in their localities. And from Lane 7's point of view, or Lane 7 Group's point of view, one of these sites will stay a par 59 mini golf and competitive socializing, and the other one will be turned into a standardized Lane 7 facility.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, well, I mean, why why rebrand anything given the fact that they already have so many different brands in their in their mix? But uh especially when a par 59 really doesn't feel like it needs to be rebranded. It seems like it sounds like it has already a decent brand in the Cardiff and Bristol area. So I feel like you just want to lean in on that a little bit unless they feel like the Lane 7 brand is just stronger. Uh, but it does feel like a little bit of a miss on the branding side, unless, of course, they are putting in some sort of bowling lanes into that location.

Topgolf CEO Learns By Listening

SPEAKER_01 28:14

I would expect some duck pit to go into that location. I would expect it to be more mixed use, and I wouldn't be surprised if lane seven is working on their own mini golf concept, which will have a much stronger branding. For all the success that uh PA 59 has achieved in its two northern UK localities, would it survive in the harsh competition of London and other sites? I don't know. That is for the money men to prove me wrong and them right. Moving on, and it's nice to see an example of listening. God, as my as my parents beat into me, God gave us two of these and one of these. Sometimes you need to go out and listen, and especially if you're a brand new minted CEO with uh a strong reputation for listening uh and taking on board what the people at the coalface have to say. It's great to see David, who's just taken on the CEO role at Top Golf, rather than jump in and make sweeping assumptions about what's wrong with Top Golf, uh, but to actually do a hundred facilities in a hundred days and visit the franchise and the owned operations and just get spend a day in the shoes of the staff and the operators and listen and listen and listen. And I would love to have been a fly on the wall during all of that process. I wish he could, but they are well, they're not a traded company at the moment, so you know it would have been nice if they had had a uh video team following around and we could get that. I don't know, maybe that has been done, but just to hear what the kitchen staff have to say, just to hear uh what the operation staff have to say, just to hear what the uh the customer-facing booking team have to say about what they see as is wrong with their fundamental site, not the whole site as a uh as a whole, but uh uh but just their particular facility. Oh, the grease trap's broken and it's been broken for 10 months and no one will listen to us. Oh, that toilet uh in the women's is still giving us trouble and is causing another problem. You know, just those simple things. Uh most CEOs, most C-suites don't get into the weeds. And I just say to our friends at Dave and Busters, it's worth copying, eh?

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Yeah, absolutely. This is why I was optimistic, though it was a bit of a shift for him. Um, but uh it was optimistic to hear that David was going to top golf. Um, if there's anybody who's going to listen and in our industry and really facilitate a turnaround, it's going to be him. Um, and uh this is because he is just this type of leader. And uh so um very uh you know excited to hear that this is something that he uh embarked on and is probably currently embarking on uh as he's moving through these hundred days.

CinemaCon And Game IP On Film

SPEAKER_01 31:17

We we've seen this done before with uh retail corporations. Uh you know, I don't want to paint any onuses, but I remember when uh the Dave and Busters, sorry, not Dave and Busters, the uh Blockbusters uh uh final executive team did this and visited all of their sites. I noticed that the the list of those hundred venues he went to, I couldn't find a swing suite on that list. But uh, you know, there's only so much you can do in a hundred days. Um taking this information, putting it through the corporate machine, cogitating it, and then turning it into an action plan, that'll be the next phase, and we look forward to hearing how that goes. But there may also be the issue of do they also want to go back onto the stock market, which will also have its own ramifications. The tail end uh as we record this, the end of Cinema Con, the bodies are being picked up, uh littering the Las Vegas uh countryside, and we're taking stock of the information that was passed on to us. Uh, we weren't as thrilled by some of the temple films that are going to mentor wow the future box offices, but we were interested to see some of uh the films that are going to be uh uh put forward, and it's always interesting to see us in the amusement industry being used to help prop up uh the uh cinema industry, transmedia at large. Mortal Kombat 2, uh the Midway arcade classic, is now getting a reboot of a reboot, uh, which looks interesting. I was watching the trailers for a number of uh the films that were pushed during the CinemaCon uh presentations. We have a reboot of a reboot uh with Street Fighter, uh, which also Capcom gets their treatment, and from Capcom's point of view, that works really nicely for the Japanese market because they're just releasing uh Street Fighter VI. Uh it works really nice because they're also pushing, as we said in the last sound off, the Street Fighter brand or IP uh to being incorporated into other entertainments, such as the Dartch Live system. And if we think about it, we're gonna see a lot more of this because the numbers came in of how much just in the first couple of months uh the Super Mario Galaxy uh uh film release, you know, 755 million. It's the highest grossing film of 2026, which doesn't say a lot, but you know, it does push it up there that an animated uh IP kids-based uh production can generate that type of number, and it is part of a two billion dollar film property from two films, pretty scary stuff, and uh we'll be seeing some other game uh activities uh being turned into the silver screen, uh hopeful profit.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Yeah. Well, look, I mean, at the end of the day, it does come down to the story and so and the quality of the production. And you know, Nintendo and you know had just done a phenomenal job um taking their Mario IP and putting it into two excellent stories uh that appeal both to kids and to the nostalgia of the adults. And so if Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, you know, Midway and cop uh Capcom can pull that off as well, which it certainly seems that at least the Street Fighter storyline seems to be somewhat interesting. They've pulled in some uh big names as well. You've heard certainly less about the Mortal Kombat uh this you know, it's an opportun opportunity for every barcade retro arcade that's out there that's got an old midway Mortal Kombat, you know, 92 uh arcade game or you know, Capcom Street Fighter arcade game to move it to the front and center of their barcade. You know, people are gonna want to come in and play those games again.

Sandbox VR Wins Webby Questions

Bowling Projection And AI Scoring

SPEAKER_01 35:19

Yeah, the the transmedia synergy is going to be uh a big part here. I could have included Sonic the Hedgehog uh movie franchise in there. I could have included the Angry Birds in there, but it was just interesting, excuse me, that uh we we look at Nintendo as well as the rumors that Nintendo is looking at that transmedia future. Talking about that transmedia future, and our friends at Sandbox VR uh were celebrating their Webby Award, uh being awarded uh the best uh VR headset experience uh in the 2026 Webies. Uh the 30th, I think, of the Webby. Uh if you're not familiar with the Webbies, it's an award given for uh uh social media, video advertising, podcasts, uh AI, a bit of everything there, but now they've also started uh to add uh uh entertainment, content creation, and a sneakily sidling up to transmedia, as everybody seems to be doing. Um is this Sandbox VR celebrating that they won a Webby, or is this Netflix celebrating that they uh their IP is so powerful that they've won a Webby again? You can read into this what you want. Moving along, and we have the trending tech. Uh we talked about funk bowling a couple of days ago, sorry, a couple of sound offs ago, as they were being brought in as a uh an additional component to a social media in uh investment firm. And now we are seeing some of the goodies that funk have been working on that will play very importantly for those boutique bowling. One of those is uh Funk Nexus or Nexus Funk, depending on the marketing you read. And this allows for uh projection mapping and for interactive gaming with scoring supported by AI, as everything seems to be at the moment. Uh, and this is in a nice simple turnkey package, which is from Funk.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah, I mean, look, I guess they needed to keep up with Brunswick in their Spark system uh to you know, instruction map. And maybe their differentiation here is well, one, their cost, but also two, their uh the fact that they've got some AI scoring. I was trying to pull it up, their site is loading terribly slow, and so I wasn't able to get any more information on their AI scoring. Um, but I'm also a little bit surprised that they announced this launch so far ahead of Bull Expo as well. Um, so usually you see these types of announcements come out, you know, a couple of weeks beforehand, a month beforehand. Sometimes they'll embargo it until the show and unveil it there. Um, but yeah, we're still, you know, we're still a good three months. Um I'm about two and a half months away from Expo. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

I think from the photographs that were used in the marketing packaging, that they are going to be announcing the first venues running the system for Bowl Expo. Uh, and they've just announced the platform here, or they want to get ahead of the announcements from two of the bowling companies who are working on their own AI automated scoring and gaming systems. Bowl Expo is going to be an AI heavy show, I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Isn't everything though?

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Uh, I'm having an issue. I understand what they were trying to do by showing the before and after photographs. For those of you uh listening to this, we have an example of a tired uh trampoline environment, uh uh, in this uh case a jumping tower at two different venues, and you see the tired ninja uh system or the tired trampoline system that is suddenly uh replaced by the Pilou. And Pylou are uh a company that really is very similar to what our friends at Velo Motion do, which is they use uh computer vision to place the individual on uh in screen while they're jumping up and down on the trampoline or the mini jump uh environment, and they do a conversion for this. Uh so you know your tired trampoline system can be turned into an interactive gamified system, and suddenly Shazam, uh your Pylo Tower uh suddenly is generating fantastic revenue where your uh your Ninja Star or your uh uh uh cross of trampoline units was was just not really bringing in the uh the revenue. This is gamification for me, Rit Last Large and Active Entertainment. We have some other examples of that coming.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is uh for the most part, they are I don't they're pretty much copying what Valor Jump has been doing. They've brought it, they have a smaller scale, which is much more aligned with Valor Jump and what they've been doing for a long time. Uh they have their, but I think the differentiator here is their large scale format that they have, where you know you have a big screen above a large trampoline area and they're jumping. Um, obviously, as I mentioned in open and shut just a couple of days ago, um, the you know, with the launch of the opening of Airtopia in Roswell, uh, you know, I mean teleplay has been you know gamifying uh what we'll call tired, as you've written here, tired active entertainment installations by putting a gamification layer on by tracking kids' you know, activity and uh location and real time and putting up on leaderboards. And so I think we're continuing to see the further gamification of adventure parks and trampoline parks uh you know across the board.

Cruise Ship Attractions And Monetization

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Yeah, and I I should pronounce their name correctly. I'm very lazy about that. I apologize. PLO. PLO have the small system that Brandon was uh uh alluding to, which we covered in our I Alpha coverage uh last year, and now this is them really showing that their technology can be applied on the Playo uh tower application, and this is big, and this is bigger than our friends at Fallow Motion would really uh be able to compete with. That said, I know of some other companies that are looking at gamification of active entertainment spaces, one of those being conductor, and this kind of falls into the look what technology applies in the FEC and the active entertainment sector that also has a part to play in the emerging cruise line business. And most of these developments that I'm talking about now come directly from announcements that were made at C Trade Cruise Global, the um cruise line uh industries uh uh IALPA equivalent, uh, and uh Conductor has developed a uh gamified system for climbing and active uh entertainment courses, many of which find their ways onto the modern uh cruise line ships. And this system, uh what they call moon climber, is very much uh interactive screens. You know, you touch the screen, uh you have the red screen and the blue screen, which are digital, and it depending on your teams and you're racing against each other, and it can work for uh an older engagement of uh a guest as well as for the very young. Uh and it it is you know, it is that gamification again.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Absolutely. Yeah, and look, it's really impressive to see conductor making the shift outside of social entertainment into uh active play and uh you know active entertainment and almost creating and adding a social layer to what has been historically a pretty singular, individualized uh type of attraction, you know, ropes courses or soft play.

London Black Box Immersive Venues

Snap And Qualcomm Bet On Glasses

SPEAKER_01 43:31

And this will be monetizable. There will be cruise line operations that have always been looking at how they can monetize their entertainment experience because you've got a captive audience on that ship. And conductor have also uh developed a waterproof uh but also very robust uh lunar midway, which are really fundamentally midway attractions that are card operated in a uh simple modular container system. system that can be deployed outside, that can be deployed on the deck of a ship or deployed in their wet area and offers an amusement level entertainment attraction that can uh that can draw an audience and draw some revenue. And I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see this type of system reconfigured for maybe competitive socializing application as we've seen with uh swingers, carnival uh and fair games. Moving on and uh again at Sea Trade uh you have limited space on your cruise ship even those of these cruise ships are monsters in uh real estate now uh and you know if you have a captive audience and you want them to have a level of engagement then maybe you have to give them a flying coaster experience or you have to give them uh a uh simulator 4D experience unlike the competitors that you're going up against in the crowded cruise line business especially a cruise line business that is looking for an increase in spend from individuals in a staycation kind of uh stagflation kind of mentality our friends at Doff Robotics has gone away and uh improved upon their previous um Nautilus uh cruising simulator or 4D immersive simulator that pretended to be a submarine and with the diving bell uh simulator itself explanatory 24 people go in and hopefully imparted to them through the digital LED screens they feel that they're sinking to the bottom of the ship hopefully only simulating that process yeah well I think this is a great great great application for their dive bell product you know uh Doth has had the dive bell in the works for quite some time and this is a great in implementation installation you know to to put this into cruise ships it it fits it makes sense this is like the inverse of what Disney has done at their space 220 for so long at Epcot right so you know instead of going up into space you're going down to the ocean and uh you know I think what's great about what DOF continues to do is again find these different uh roll out these different types of vehicles that allow for a varied experiences and at a you know relatively affordable costs for uh the different uh for different facilities that's the difference this is technology that has been around though I would argue that most of the interpretations of this used a projected screen rather than uh LED digital screens they've managed to utilize their skill sets in their motion base they've made it into a small configurable package that can be uh installed onto a cruise line ship and I would not be surprised if some uh FEC operators uh mix-use ledger entertainment operators look at something like that and think about how it could be turned into a min-scale attraction for their facilities these you know all of those uh Venn diagrams linked together eventually uh the cost effective approach of uh uh attraction technology taking what has been proven in the big uh e uh e-ticket attractions and scaling them down for smaller venues is also uh on evidence here from Simworks well-known media attractions developer they have worked on their own interpretation of the um what I would call the uh avatar um kind of experience uh which is a mixture of the soaring and a unique seating system they have now configured that so it can be deployed in uh a mixture of different types of uh venues museums and applications as a as a soaring kind of uh entertainment experience for me it's surprising that uh Simworks succeeded in an Istanbul project uh it must have been some real tight competition between them and Doff Robotics with this this particular installation yeah and I think it probably ultimately comes down to the ride vehicle design um it's much more of a seated leaning forward into like almost like a quasi-motorcycle type feel and uh yeah yeah doff just doesn't currently have something like that in their in their library yet I'm sure yes uh moving on and linked to uh what we were doing with uh London Experience Week uh the opening of the event took place in one of the many black boxes that are popping up over London and other cities and when I say a black box I'm meaning an environment that is using digital walls uh in some cases a mixture of both LED walls in the top part of the experience and then in the basement of the experience uh you have projection mapped uh immersive theatre kinds of systems uh the view Piccadilly lights you know the iconic Piccadilly circus uh display is run by uh Piccadilly lights and they now have a venue directly underneath there which is used both for marketing as well as for digital performances and we were lucky enough to launch uh London's uh week of experience uh discussion technology and innovation uh within one of the latest of the black boxes that hopes to promote that kind of immersive uh experiential environment interesting something for us to do when you're next over Brent exactly there's so much more to do next over so much more I I'm just about to go on a uh a field trip around London and uh I'll have sore feet at the end of it the big news uh of uh really the consolidation Snap is already in location based and transmedia you know they have their involvement with versus uh and they will be used uh their glasses system their AR glasses system powered by Qualcomm uh processors are looking at other applications in the location-based entertainment so the announcement of the penning of a multi-year strategic agreement between these two parties is obvious especially in the AR smart glasses fuel fervor that we seem to find ourselves post VR but also uh because we know that the processing power the battery life uh and the form factor are central to establish this technology in our uh sector as well as in consumer yeah I mean this makes sense for Snap.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

I mean Qualcomm's Snapdragon line has really been the leader in you know from for mobile uh processing and uh you know high and you know high speed mobile processing for quite some time. And so uh yeah this just makes a lot of sense given the form factor that Snap is trying to deploy.

Atari Games Become Interactive Floors

SPEAKER_01 51:16

And be aware of this the walled garden approach to technology development has come to an end and now it's going to be a lot more Kumbaya partnerships and multi-year agreements uh so we all benefit rather than just one company dominate. Interesting uh the active entertainment side uh our friends uh with Pixel Games have uh been finding great success along with others with their uh illuminated interactive uh floor and wall systems uh our friends of Pixel Games had toyed or had trailed that they had a partnership with Atari when they uh launched their Pong-enabled uh uh game experience now we find out that this is a multi-game experience uh and that they will be releasing an official Atari game pack that will include Pong obviously Missile Command and uh Domino's uh as classic uh 1970s and 1980s pixel games retro arcade pixel games now repurposed as interactive floor experiences I tried the pong system uh or the the floor with pong uh at uh IALPA I think that was IAPA Europe rather than IAPA Orlando and that was in an early version I'm looking forward to seeing what their interpretation of missile command is going to be I think hopefully missile command in dominoes will be better.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

I did actually try the Pong at IAPA Expo in Orlando and and I also watched it played by a number of other people in addition to playing it myself and I was fairly underwhelmed by the experience. I think one of the big issues is that it the the block does move relatively slowly and comes at odd angles and it's difficult for guests to understand. So hopefully they fixed that in this full launch but you know missile command and dominoes are obviously two different types of experiences and require a little bit less of the um you know the angles and things that Pong sometimes does and can mess people up with so anyway it'll be uh I'm glad to hear that they have some other games coming out and they might just have some others in the hopper as well.

Building The AWE XR Program

Final Takeaways And Contact Info

SPEAKER_01 53:36

I'm sure they have a wide library of uh pixel classics from the heydays I I agree that I was concerned about the processor speed but what I also wanted was I wanted a higher resolution and that kind of gets us to the the LED uh digital floor systems which I know this isn't this is illuminated panels anyway uh just as we rush towards May and then June uh we have the augmented world expo and we are going to have the pleasure of Snap and Qualcomm as key sponsors and supporters uh of the uh the event as well as the L E LBE XR zone that we're running. I'm just about to start next month the uh compiling of the panel sessions and the conference sessions that are going to be dedicated uh to that and we're lucky enough that some you know very important individuals within the defining the future of uh LBE uh in XR have uh graciously uh accepted that they would like to be involved with this we really want to create an environment to share information about what the future of location based XR is rather than fixate on just one particular arrow in the quiver as it were this isn't just about VR we are talking about MR uh projection mapped as well as glasses mapped we will have uh AR uh writ large uh at this particular event and I feel it's very important that you know we are talking the language about what comes next and not just hype it but also make sure that it fits the model that we've now recognized that location based entertainment needs. There is that moving on as I was talking previously about the next phase of investment and we are at a very important point where operators that have had VR systems for over five years are going to have to make some hard decisions about what they're going to place those technologies with next. Anyway as usual hit me up on LinkedIn and tell me I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

We have uh some stinger reports uh coming out we have some entertainment social arenas coming out uh and also uh please hit me up on email if there's any specific questions perfect all right well that was a great sound off with Kevin and we will already be looking forward to number one hundred and twenty next week so see you all on the next one. Have a good one