SandboxVR just got a massive funding round of $68 million from top VC firm Andreessen Horowitz at a time when other virtual reality startups are struggling for capital, so it's worth looking at what they're doing that others are not. It doesn't depend on consumers adoption of VR headsets and it's not targeting gamers per se; instead, what they're going for is a kind of "Holodeck for Instagram":
Sandbox VR provides a virtual-reality experience — you and your friends gear up, donning some of the latest VR headsets and high-tech computer backpacks, and are dropped into a virtual world, whether it's a pirate ship, a zombie invasion, or a vision of what Hong Kong could look like in 2088. It costs about $40 per person for an hourlong experience, which you book online. Sandbox VR plans to use its Series A to expand to new locations and create different experiences — games — for people to play at Sandbox locations...
Part of how Sandbox VR markets itself is through social media. Participants get video of themselves all rigged up and can share clips of themselves as the characters inside the game. "Seeing it on Instagram is going to be one of the really killer secrets of this business," said Andrew Chen, an Andreessen Horowitz partner. "When you are having such a good time, and it creates a video of you and all your friends screaming and ducking and like all this happening, and it's so fun, that's this leap that so many people share."
I can see this working! Then again (as I'm sure Sandbox VR and Andreesen Horowitz also know), VR-driven content can only remain popular on Instagram with constantly refreshed and updated content (lest people get bored with it), and Snapchat's augmented reality features which enable sharing virtualized experiences with friends haven't exactly helped the app maintain momentum. And far as location-based VR go, name brand IMAX couldn't attract an audience to its VR experiences that was larger than the audience for a single small movie theater.
All that to one side, here's hoping Sandbox VR created a winning alchemy . Watch the trailer below:
Thoughts?
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