Sandbox VR of Hong-Kong has just reeled in an epic $68 million dollar investment from top-tier Silicon Valley VC Andreessen Horowitz. In my opinion, this has little to do with Sandbox as it currently exists, and everything do with being the movie theater of the future, a play that has been sitting out there in plain sight for several years now.
This week's roundup is late, and we skipped last week altogether, but I have a good excuse: we're in the home stretch of finishing our new book Covergence, How The World Will Be Painted With Data, which will be released at the SXSW March 12.
I'm still in the middle of it. Behind me is a month of eighteen-hour days. I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel, but it's still two weeks away. Next Friday, February 15th, we deliver Convergence to the printer. We get a week to review proofs. Then the presses roll. That's the beginning of the next phase. Finish the app. Finish the website. Sell my ass off. Meanwhile, the world goes on. 68 million dollars is a lot more money. It's 2,000 times more than was invested in the book!
Hong Kong's Sandbox VR, which is backed by Chinese online retail giant Ali Baba, is a location-based VR (LBVR) entertainment startup that says it's going build the Star Trek holodeck with a mixture of hardware and Hollywood level content. I visited their first US location in the Bay Area’s upscale San Mateo Hillsdale Shopping Center which opened last summer (2018). If you haven't experienced free roam from The VOID, Dreamscape, Zero Latency, or VR Studios, Sandbox VR is mighty impressive. Free roam is the only true, natural locomotion VR system. Having experienced all these systems, I suspect I am one of the few people in the world who can fairly compare them. I have no dog in this fight. I want more people to have access to free roam VR. I don't really care whose system it is. However, the content matters a lot. Can or would you repeat with friends? Here's my review and a prediction: their mall location is going to do great the first year and then begin a slow and painful descent into oblivion. They’ve since signed deals with Westfield Malls and CBS Interactive. Still, I wonder how much Andressen really knows about retail entertainment, and what's behind their assumption they can acquire or make "Hollywood content" themselves. That's a whole nother can o' whoop ass that we shall open in a future column.
For retail VR to scale, there needs to be one standard system that can play everyone's content. Like a movie theater, the winning VR retailer will have a platform that can show free roam VR experiences from anyone. No one company, even one with $68 million, can build hundreds of locations and fill them with new content consistently. The vertical approach, opening and operating retail entertainment while at the same time running a content production studio is unworkable. The businesses are too different.
The lead investor on the Andressen side of the deal, Andrew Chen, has stated they liked the "flexibility" and "small footprint" of the Sandbox VR system. This could go either way. They could score a win here by filling a vacuum and being the LBVR platform, or they could spend the next three years as I did at Virtual World in the 90s, bailing water while fighting for premium real estate, waiting for content and hardware upgrades, and praying the wind pushes you to your destination before the sand runs out of the hourglass. There are so many risks here, including the one that in two years world-scale free roaming in a 5G connected city will vaporize the audience for retail VR.
Warby Parker joins the AR train with their “Try On” app. Using AR to try on glasses before purchase is becoming one of the most popular use cases for smartphone-based mobile AR. Warby Parker’s new iOS app uses ARKit to let users see themselves with a pair of glasses using their phone’s camera. If a user likes what they see, the glasses can be ordered directly through the app.
Angry Birds launches in VR. Rovio Entertainment and Resolution games partner again to bring the popular physics puzzle franchise to VR. The newest installation, Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs, is available today for $14.99 on the Oculus Store, Steam and Viveport for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Traveling While Black VR film premieres at Sundance. The 360 3D film takes viewers inside 1958 Ben’s Chili Bowl, a restaurant listed in the historical “The Green Book” survival guide for African Americans during segregation. The survival guide led travelers to establishments that would provide service without discrimination. The film can be found today on the Oculus Store.
"This Week in XR" is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
