Arizona Sunshine creator Vertigo Games has been involved in the location-based entertainment (LBE) side of the virtual reality (VR) industry for several years now and today marks another step in that journey. The company has completed its acquisition of SpringboardVR, a platform providing VR venue management software and content.
The purchase brings SpringboardVR under the umbrella of Vertigo Games and its new parent company Koch Media. Certain key customer-facing members of the SpringboardVR team will be moving across to ensure its service and operations remain unaffected for arcade operators worldwide. The SpringboardVR brand will continue with VR arcades also able to access Vertigo Games’ own free-roam VR content via its HAZE VR distribution platform, offering titles like Arizona Sunshine LB VR.
“Vertigo Games continues to believe in the power of location-based virtual reality to drive the growth of the medium,” said John Coleman, Director of Business Development at Vertigo Games in a statement. “We’ve had a great relationship with the SpringboardVR team over the past four years, and we are excited to pick up the responsibility to carry forward the vision of SpringboardVR.”
With the acquisition now complete the founders of SpringboardVR and a core team are launching a new company called ArborXR. This will be an enterprise-focused company which manages devices, content, and users in a singular ecosystem.
“ArborXR is a natural evolution for us – we always saw the transformative power of VR beyond entertainment,” noted Jordan Williams, Co-Founder and COO of ArborXR. “Many companies today are trying to deliver XR training and experiences using consumer hardware and inadequate enterprise software. Consequently, as they transition from pilot projects to larger deployments, they face all kinds of problems. We’ve already built a commercial VR solution managing thousands of users, devices, and content titles and we translated that experience to ArborXR, which is purpose-built to make it easier for companies and content providers to deploy enterprise VR at scale.”
Vertigo Games’ VR experiences are currently available across more than 700 arcades, theme parks and other venues, with the Arizona Sunshine franchise remaining strong.
There’s been renewed interest in the LBE sector with the likes of SPREE Interactive continuing to invest and Immersive Tech revealing its UNCONTAINED attraction. For further updates on the sector, keep reading VRFocus.