Here is a quick synopsis of the the Variety article, Location Based VR.
- The folks at Variety are very excited about the Void’s new Immersive Experience called “Curse of the Serpent’s Eye”, an immersive take on the Indiana Jones theme. It will premier next month and be the second installment after the Ghost Buster’s experience. Interesting enough The Void’s Co-Founder, James Jensen, identifies that the best immersive experiences are the ones with real, physical props. CEO, Cliff Plummer is very bullish on Immersive Experience being a draw back to Malls and Movie Theaters. He says, “The studios are looking for new revenue streams. We (the Void) have one, and it’s easy for them to relate to.” The Void has also been admitted to Disney’s Accelerator Start-ups.
- 20th Century Fox President of innovation, Salil Mehta, agrees, “We believe that location-based VR will be the way that many people experience virtual reality for the first time. It’s an incredible opportunity for us to create industry-defining immersive experiences that can’t be replicated in your living room.”
- FoxNext is developing an “Alien” immersive experience and has invested in on of The Void’s competitors, “Dreamscape Immersive“.
- Lionsgate Interactive Ventures and Games president Peter Levin endorsed location-based VR wholeheartedly at the recent VRTL industry conference: “We are extremely bullish on it.”
- Paramount unveiled an immersive experience supporting “Transformers: The Last Knight”.
- Doug Griffin, from Nomadic, says, “We’ve heard over and over from film studios that location-based is becoming part of their strategy moving forward.”
- It seems everyone is disappointed at the rate which VR has been accepted by the public. They see location based installment, similar to those in China, as being avenues which the average person can try out the newest VR experiences without having to plop down the money to get started in VR.
- The Imax VR experience Center is taking a little bit of a different approach as it focuses more on individual pods for participants to experience instead of the complicated setups such as the Void. They have locations in Los Angeles and New York will be opening soon in Toronto, Manchester and Shanghai. Imax is using these installments as a soft launch before embarking on a flood over 1000s of movie theaters.
- Problems identified are throughput and the inevitability that home VR system will get better. Similarly there is the issue of price tag. Many of the experiences vary from $30 to $15 for a 15 minute experience. Nomadic’s Griffin thinks lower prices are key to taking location-based VR mainstream. “We want to bring this medium of entertainment to neighborhoods everywhere,” he says. “We don’t charge a price that is out of reach for those smaller neighborhoods and communities.”
- Griffon also believes by creating Modular set pieces each location will need to go through very small down time shifting experiences.Nomadic’s Griffin thinks lower prices are key to taking location-based VR mainstream. “We want to bring this medium of entertainment to neighborhoods everywhere,” he says. “We don’t charge a price that is out of reach for those smaller neighborhoods and communities.”
- Wisely, companies such as the Void realize that content is king and are creating pipelines for producing new experiences every 3 to six months. We’ll have to see how well that pans out 🙂 Smartly they are investigating the concept of creating persistent avatars and monetizing their product tie-ins with the avatars.
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