Tag Archives: VR

Cityneon wins Lumiere Award for VR Machu Picchu experience

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Cityneon‘s VR experience, Machu Picchu and the Spirit of the Condor, has won the Best Use of VR category at the 12th annual Lumiere Awards.

The company was honoured alongside many top industry names in global film, television, and gaming studios in the awards ceremony, held at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

Cityneon’s Machu Picchu and the Spirit of the Condor features the first-ever virtual showcase of the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Peru. Through the utilisation of patented VR motion chairs fully equipped with multi-sensory stimulation features such as high-resolution six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) VR headsets, haptic feedback on the backseats, scent dispensers and unlimited 360-degree rotation, the VR experience is featured as the highlight of the company’s Original Artefact IP Experience – Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru.

“We are ecstatic to receive this prestigious award,” says Ron Tan, Executive Chairman & Group CEO of Cityneon Holdings. “This award not only recognises the wonderful potential of virtual reality in capturing the world around us, but it is also a testament to Cityneon’s expertise in innovative technologies that empowers the Group to bring immersive entertainment to a whole new level.”

As a global leader of immersive experiences, Cityneon seeks to capture the imagination of their visitors and deliver compelling experiences that will shape the future of the experience entertainment industry. Their enduring partnerships with global partners such as Disney, Marvel, Hasbro, Universal, Lionsgate, and 20th Century Studios, and the Peruvian and Egyptian governments, drive the company to produce world-class experiences for millions of visitors each year.

Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru launched last October at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida and the experience will be travelling to Paris at the City of Architecture and Heritage, Palais de Chaillot, on 16 April 2022. The Group also launched the world premiere of Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs in Houston, Texas, last November.

Apart from the two artefact IPs, the Group also holds studio IP rights including partnerships with 20th Century Studios for Avatar: The Exhibition, Universal Studios for Jurassic World: The Exhibition, Marvel for Marvel Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. – debuting in Tokyo this April – Lionsgate for The Hunger Games: The Exhibition, and Hasbro for Transformers: The Experience.

Cityneon has also recently announced a partnership with Warner Bros. Themed Entertainment to produce two unique global touring themed art experiences inspired by DC Comics and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, slated to launch in 2023.

To support its global endeavours, Cityneon has announced its expansion into Qatar to cater to markets in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and the launch of a new R&D facility in Wuxi, China, to further expand its capabilities in entertainment robotics.

 

UK consumer games market hits a record value of £7bn in 2020

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Consumers spent a record amount in the UK video games market in 2020, with the sector valued at £7bn for the year – according to Ukie’s 2020 Consumer Market Valuation.

The result marks a 29.9 per cent increase on 2019, and over £1bn higher than 2018’s previous record total of £5.7bn.

As reported by Licensing.biz’s associate title, MCV UK, game software sales across all categories rose 18.5 per cent, from £3.8bn to £4.5bn, with digital sales encompassing 85 per cent of all software sales. Despite many shops being closed for much of the year due to the pandemic, sales of new boxed games grew 7.1 per cent – reversing the downward trend of recent years.

Games hardware sales had a record year, reaching £2.3bn, a growth of 60.8 per cent year on year, thanks to the launch of the new consoles, as well as accessories and PC component sales.

The launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles pushed console hardware sales up 74.8 per cent year on year, according to data from GfK Entertainment. Despite the new consoles, it’s actually the Nintendo Switch that generated the largest share of console hardware revenue. The March 2020 release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been a major driver of this success.

PC games hardware sales had a good year too, driven by the move to home working. VR hardware sales meanwhile grew by nearly a third to £129m, thanks in no small part to accessible, standalone headsets such as the Oculus Quest 2.

The game culture section of the valuation (revenue from activities associated with games) also grew to £199m, fuelled by a 22.4 per cent increase in toys and merchandising revenue  – countering the COVID-related shortfalls in other categories.

The February release of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie helped defend the movies and soundtracks category from the worst of the pandemic, with an overall decline of just 22.2 per cent.

For the first time, this year’s valuation includes a measurement of streaming and game video content revenues. UK consumers spent £45.6m through donations and subscriptions, making up for the obvious decline in physical event revenues.

“The latest consumer market valuation confirms just how valuable games proved to people across the country during one of the toughest years of our lives,” said Dr Jo Twist OBE, CEO of Ukie.

“The games sector is a growing, resilient and critical part of the UK’s successful creative industries sector. We all know how important entertainment, technology and creativity have been over the last year. The London Games Festival over the next 10 days will showcase and connect the fantastic leading games businesses right here in the UK with global audiences, investors and publishers, and will demonstrate games’ power to connect, entertain and innovate.”

The valuation was announced at the start of this year’s London Games Festival, run in partnership with Film London and Ukie. The digital event runs 19 March to 28 March, supported by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Xsolla, CCP Games, Hiro Capital and Here East.

The 2021 edition of the event features over 100 games, participation from 400 companies from 25 different countries – with over 1,000 professionals connecting online for business meetings, investor pitches and roundtables.

Highlights from the event include the LGF world stage, featuring the festival’s daily videos and premieres. The full schedule of 60+ broadcasts is available from today from the event’s website. A range of content will be made available free to everyone, from music performances and industry panels to special documentaries and launches.

For the first time, the festival will feature an Official Selection of 40 games from around the world, representing quality, innovation and diversity. The selection will highlight creative talent across four categories: Made In London, Narrative Excellence, International Innovators and Pick Up And Play. A dedicated website for the Official Selection is found here, and the festival has created daily videos supporting each game on the World Stage as well as digital retailer promotions.

The festival will also have a focus on mental health, through a partnership with games industry charity Safe In Our World and its Safer Together Campaign. The campaign offers a public Discord, which will launch during the festival and will provide a platform for gamers and the industry to connect, discuss games and be a safe space for all to talk.

The Now Play This programme will feature an additional 25 games and experience. Taking place from March 25th to 28th, the programme centres around the climate crisis, and how interactive experiences can inform and educate. Now Play This includes online talks and workshops, and a number of in-game activities – such as a ‘flight’ to the festival using Hosni Auji’s Airplane Mode.

Overall, this year’s event will include over 400 games businesses, the biggest showing the festival has seen since the festival started as a physical event in 2016.

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This was reported on by Chris Wallace,  MCV/DEVELOP’s staff writer, who joined the team after graduating from Cardiff University with a Master’s degree in Magazine Journalism. He can regrettably be found on Twitter at @wallacec42, where he mostly explores his obsession with the Life is Strange series, for which he refuses to apologise.

SPREE Interactive moves to be ‘at the forefront of VR attractions industry’ through licensing

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SPREE Interactive, a specialist in commercial VR attractions has signed its first, exclusive licensing partnership with VR Nerds to distribute the world’s first all-in-one mobile VR eSports experience for Tower Tag.

Tower Tag is currently the largest VR eSport game in the world, with over one million plays to date. The partnership will see the creation of a new SPREE Arena, in which up to eight players will be able to compete against each other or work as a team against a team of AI bots.

The licensing partnership is one among a suite of new updates for SPREE Interactive which in November 2020 secured a seven-digit investment of an undisclosed amount from two strategic and two financial investors. The firm will use the latest investment to expand its global operations.

Among its objectives is to tap int the growing demand of shopping centres across the US to diversify their offering as an impact of the coronavirus pandemic. With over 3 billion gamers globally by 2023, the global gaming market is estimated to reach $92.31 billion in the next six years. Meanwhile, esports revenues are estimated to reach $1.5bn by 2023.

Combined with the need for retail destinations to diversify their offering, SPREE Interactive believes there to be a lucrative future in combining all these elements.

“Covid has fueled even more demand from shopping malls which now desperately need alternate revenue streams and innovative ways to utilize the floor space especially with foot traffic fluctuating and increasing in various markets,” said Jonathan Nowak Delgado, founder and managing director, SPREE Interactive. 

SPREE’s products deliver one of the highest ROI in the industry. Operators are recouping their investment in less than six months generating additional revenue with an average of 2,500 plays per location, per month, boosting ticket sales and revenue for its enterprise clients like Family Entertainment Centers. 

Founded in 2017, formerly known as Holodeck VR, SPREE Interactive enables their clients, global entertainment retail chains, to successfully re-attract players into their locations. 

SPREE has previously billed its content strategy as ‘the Netflix of the hyper-immersive social virtual reality experiences,’ through which it will enable third-party content developers – such as VR Nerds – to develop for its open platform.

SPREE Investor, Stephan Berendsen, founder and managing director of the Germany-based firm, Berendsen Holding GmbH said: “Having sold my own company to Disney 15 years ago, I know what it takes for a company to become attractively scalable and profitable – and SPREE has the potential for both.”

SPREE’s founder and managing director Jonathan Nowak Delgado, concluded: “In order to continue to be on the forefront of the VR attractions industry, we will continue to build upon proprietary, patented sensor fusion technology, strategic partnerships and cutting edge content distribution platform as we plan our Series A round later this year.”