Category: LBVR

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VR Attraction Sandbox VR Reeled in $23M Annual Revenue from Most Popular Experience

Sandbox VR, the location-based VR destination, announced that its most popular experience has generated $23 million in ticket sales in the last 12 months.

Launched in the summer of 2022, Deadwood Valley is said to be the company’s most cinematic game, letting players defend against a horde of zombies as a squad.

It’s been so successful, Sandbox VR says the experience has now surpassed $23 million in ticket sales across 30 locations, and is projected to make $100 million in lifetime sales.

All of the company’s multiplayer VR experiences have been developed by in-house gaming studios, allowing teams of up to six players to tackle a host of missions in games such as Star Trek Discovery: Away Mission, Curse of Davy Jones, Deadwood Mansion, and Unbound Fighting League. An experience based on Squid Game is also set to launch sometime in late 2023.

In addition to recently opening its second in-house gaming studio in Vancouver, the company says it will also start letting third-party game developers to create titles for its location-based platform starting in 2024.

Billing itself as the world’s fastest growing location-based VR company, Sandbox VR is now operating in 43 locations spanning major cities in North America, Europe, and Asia, a dozen of which launched in the last 12 months.

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Ubisoft Developing VR Escape Room Set During Notre-Dame Fires

Ubisoft is developing a new location-based VR experience in partnership with Pathé, according to Variety. The experience will put players right in the middle of the 2019 fires at the French cathedral of Notre-Dame.

The experience will tie-in with Jean-Jacques Annaud’s upcoming IMAX documentary, “Notre-Dame on Fire”. It was Annaud who spearhead this virtual immersive tie-in with the movie, by reaching out to Ubisoft in early 2021 while shooting the documentary

Set to release in March alongside the doco, the Notre-Dame on Fire immersive experience will take the form of a puzzle-based VR escape room. It will run for one hour, during which players will be placed in the shoes of the Parisian fire brigade inside the cathedral on April 15, 2019, when the building went up in flames.

“Like any escape game, it’s a question of puzzles and co-operating with your teammates,” says Ubisoft senior VP new business and strategic alliances Deborah Papiernik. “The idea is to make your way through the cathedral to find relics and to fight the fire, because you have to save Notre Dame [before the clock runs out].”

Ubisoft are no strangers to featuring Notre-Dame in its properties — a model of the cathedral first appeared in Assassin’s Creed: Unity. That model, in the wake of the fires, was spun out into a free PC experience called Notre-Dame de Paris: Journey Back in Time in September 2020.

The Notre-Dame on Fire VR experience will release globally in March, available to all of Ubisoft’s international partners. “We have 630 international partner locations that all have access to our games,” said Papiernik. “[In March] they’ll have access to this latest one as soon as we push the button.”

Keep an eye out for more new on Notre-Dame on Fire soon.

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Atari To Open Hotels Across The US, Will Feature Immersive AR/VR Experiences

Atari is opening 8 gaming-themed hotels across the United States, which will feature immersive virtual and augmented reality experiences. The first hotel will open in Phoenix, with construction set to commence midway through this year.

The hotels will be built in partnership with GSD Group, who have acquired the rights to build the video game-themed venues. Atari is one of the oldest video game companies around, famous for its gaming hardware in the 20th century and some iconic titles such as Pong and RollerCoaster Tycoon.

While Phoenix will be the first location, there are also plans for hotels in Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, and San Jose. Select locations will also feature facilities for esports tournaments as well.

There are no concrete details on what exactly we can expect on the VR and AR side of things, besides the hotels including “the latest in VR and AR (Virtual and Augmented Reality).”

There’s a chance that we could see VR experiences based on IPs that famously appeared on Atari hardware, such as Pac-Man. We tried out a Pac-Man VR experience while in Japan recently for the VR Culture Show, which you can check out in the video embedded above. Given that these experiences have already been developed, it’s possible some of them could be licensed out and end up in the Atari hotels, given their significance to the Atari brand.

Alongside the press release, Atari released a piece of concept art of the potential design of the hotel, featuring a sleek Atari logo down one side, as pictured below:

atari hotel vr ar

In perhaps the wildest part of the press release, Atari announced that GSD Group is leading the hotel development and design in conjunction with Napoleon Smith III. Who is Napoleon Smith III, you might ask? Only the producer of the both films in the rebooted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise from 2014 and 2016. That’s right – the producer of two TMNT films is designing a hotel chain for Atari. What a time to be alive.

You can find more information at the Atari Hotels website.

The post Atari To Open Hotels Across The US, Will Feature Immersive AR/VR Experiences appeared first on UploadVR.

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LBVR Specialist mk2 to Integrate Secret Location’s Vusr Venue for Global Content Delivery

When it comes to location-based virtual reality (LBVR) entertainment two thing are highly important, the hardware for visitors to use and where you get your content from. mk2 is a specialist provider of VR equipment, providing locations across Europe with its mk2 VR Pods. The company had been searching for a content management tool, announcing a new partnership with Secret Location to use its all-in-one solution, Vusr Venue.

Vusr Media - 1

Both companies have a shared goal to create a worldwide VR distribution network and this collaboration is a step in that direction.

Secret Location unveiled content management platform Vusr Venue way back in 2016 as a way for VR creators to easily publish, distribute and monetise content for VR platforms. The platform looks to offer LBVR operators efficient management of content through a centralized dashboard, where they are able to view station operating statuses, troubleshoot hardware, components and software, download and install new software, manage live sessions and more.

mk2 launched its VR Pod earlier this year. Designed as a VR plug-and-play solution for various venues mk2 has sold them to institutions including the National Public Library of France and the Film Fund in Luxembourg, Nordisk in Scandinavia as well as exclusive partners in Brazil (Arvore) and Asia.

mk2 Nordisk Film Biografer

“mk2 has long been searching for an easy-to-use content management tool to power our VR Pods. Secret Location’s Vusr Venue is providing exactly what our global customers need, and more,” said Elisha Karmitz, CEO of mk2 in a statement. “Vusr Venue gives our operators simple methods to manage the complex back-end components of VR LBEs and will help mk2’s VR Pods even easier to use at any scale.”

mk2’s VR Pods feature over 50 curated experiences, but with Vusr Venue the company aims to offer a lot more that can be distributed globally. Secret Location has begun several collaborations with studios to ensure monthly content additions, they include Felix & Paul Studios, Atlas V, WITHIN and SuperHot Team to name a few.

While Secret Location and mk2 continue to push the growth of the LBVR industry, last week saw it take a hit with IMAX VR announcing the full closure of its centres worldwide. As the industry continues to find its footing in the entertainment world, VRFocus will notify you of the latest announcements.