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The Future Of Virtual Reality Isn't Your Living Room - It's The Mall

kevinw729
Honored Visionary
A wave of public space virtual reality (otherwise known as location-based entertainment or LBE) is breaking, allowing everyone to experience new high-end home VR systems whose requirements puts them out of the reach of most consumers. Unique, large-scale experiences like free-roam VR, which can never be duplicated at home, will soon appear in malls and other retail destinations around the country.
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Full feature - https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2017/03/07/the-future-of-virtual-reality-isnt-your-living-room-its-the-mall/#510e19793f36
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959
42 REPLIES 42

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
@kevinw729 - Some people might want to see a film in a cinema, but you also have a choice and that's to watch a film at home. I like to watch films at home on my own tbh. I used to visit Cinemas, but I was always put off by some people making noises and laughing at things I didn't find funny. I much prefer to watch a film on my own now without those distractions..


Techy111 said:

Can we stop calling them Malls !!!! They are shopping centers  😛  



Now Techy, don't tell me you don't enjoy a visit to the mall after soccer practice

RorschachPhoeni
Trustee

kevinw729 said:



Problem is: Malls are dying.



I always have problems with sweeping assumptions - I understand your premise @RorschachPhoenix - but it is sweeping. For example the Factory Mall (Outlet) business in the States is booming seeing year on year profits, while the traditional shopping Mall (covered) are seeing challenging conditions. A mixture of online shopping and new social draws on disposable time & income. All that said, there is a drive in the mall scene to aim at a more "Retail-tainment" stance and already a number of successful projects have been seen internationally that paints a slightly more upbeat future for the mall than your broad brush stroke. 


Thanks for clearing that up. I meant the traditional shopping malls.
But I am still not sure if this is the future of VR. I personaly would not go there. I like to have my privacy. I want to play VR at home. I don't like it to be surrounded by other people. I never liked those "attraction" things. Of course there is a market for that, because a lot of VR experiences are just those little, funny "try-it-once" things. And VR is not mainstream enough right now. So, I get it. But I don't think this is the future. It is the now. And the now will be gone very fast. The prices for the HMDs are too low. Back in the days the graphics of the arcades were mindblowing, but at some point you could by a console with good graphics.
This is just my feeling, but I personly think VR/AR will be combined at some point. And you will carry it with you like a smartphone. Obviously this future is still a few years away. We will see.
Excuse my bad english. I speak to you through the google translator. 😛


Techy111 said:

Can we stop calling them Malls !!!! They are shopping centers  😛  



Filthy animal.  We call them shopping centres where i come from!
Big PC, all the headsets, now using Quest 3

falken76
Expert Consultant

kevinw729 said:



Problem is: Malls are dying.



I always have problems with sweeping assumptions - I understand your premise @RorschachPhoenix - but it is sweeping. For example the Factory Mall (Outlet) business in the States is booming seeing year on year profits, while the traditional shopping Mall (covered) are seeing challenging conditions. A mixture of online shopping and new social draws on disposable time & income. All that said, there is a drive in the mall scene to aim at a more "Retail-tainment" stance and already a number of successful projects have been seen internationally that paints a slightly more upbeat future for the mall than your broad brush stroke. 




Our malls look like Ghost Towns here in Tucson Az.  I think Malls will get a little life back in them once that new law gets implemented online and all of us consumers start getting robbed by taxes on purchases again.  I know I've made MANY purchases online to avoid the rip off of tax, now with shipping, there's little incentive to shop online all the time.  People might start coming out of their caves again and going into the malls, but I think this nation is a nation of sloths now so the sloth factor may still keep most shopping online.  But I think some people will start going back to the malls because of the internet tax.

I personally think VR attractions would be a better fit for places like Dave and Busters or perhaps in Air ports where your target demographic might be stranded for hours on end between flights and sitting bored out of their skulls staring at VR kiosks that are littered throughout the airport.  If they can sell $12 whoppers and $10 Tuna Sandwhiches at the airport, surely they can sell vr attractions.  I really hope malls do come back, our future looks boring with dying malls, driverless cars and employeeless Amazon stores.  I lived through the reveloution of the Microcomputer and vividly remember the emphasis was always on how interconnected we would become with this technology and how much life would improve because of our ability to communicate better.  I doubt anybody of the time thought that future would be to aim for cars with no drivers and stores with no employees, we seem to get more anti social as tech develops.... Despite all our social media.

falken76
Expert Consultant

RedRizla said:

@kevinw729 - Some people might want to see a film in a cinema, but you also have a choice and that's to watch a film at home. I like to watch films at home on my own tbh. I used to visit Cinemas, but I was always put off by some people making noises and laughing at things I didn't find funny. I much prefer to watch a film on my own now without those distractions..


I don't like going to theaters because I can't pause the movie to go to the bathroom and honestly I can't stand sitting in one place for so damn long, my spine starts to hurt.  As for arcades, they have to offer something you can't get at home, that's why they died out around 1995 when Playstation 1 came out.   What VR arcades can offer that you can't get at home are the apparatus that the VR are connected to that adds to immersion, i.e.  The go cart and steering wheel in the VR Mario Kart Game.  So the places that hold these machines will have to be HUGE, but I think the hardest part would be in selling the experience.  Arcades can't have much depth, they are designed to eat money and those games usually have zero replay value.  It's a tough sale at 25 cents, 50 cents is a hard sale and $1.00 might as well be a Million because that's a lot for one game.  This is based on 1990's reasoning.  How much does a VR game have to get per play from each player to be worth while?  If you get into the $1 to $5 range I absolutely believe you will not get much revenue from repeat business.  How long will it take to pay off the investment of 1 vr attraction if they all have these expensive add ons that makes them appealing over home experiences in the first place?  I think Street Fighter 2 style multiplayer games might bring interests back to arcades, but again it has to be cheap, it can't be $1 plus, it can't even be $.50 cents.  The expense is why I think Dave and Busters type establishments would be a place to see this stuff.

inovator
Consultant
Video gaming in malls and other places once was big. As games became more complicated and u had to put lots of money in the machines to extend your play it died. People woke up one day and said I can play the same games and more on my game console. Vr in malls are good for now but home tech will catch up with commercial tech. Current tech will still win since it's still going to be expensive to play at the mall on a regular bases for the amount of time u want to play if  u love vr.

cybernettr
Superstar
So many pieces of wrong in the original story! I haven’t read the whole piece, just the posted blurb, and already I can spot several false assumptions:

1. This is confusing early days of virtual reality with the current era (remember “Virtuality?”)  In those days, VR systems were so expensive individuals could not afford them 

2.  “New high-end systems puts them out of reach of most consumers“ —  totally ignores the continuing Exponential price/performance improvement of Digital technologies.  Technology keeps getting better while the price declines. Example: Early mobile phones were so expensive only professional businessmen could afford them. 

 3. Malls are actually declining in popularity in favor of “big box” stores—check the stats. 

4.  People don’t like using VR in public spaces because they look like dweebs – they become self-conscious. 

5. “Unique, large scale experiences will never be duplicated at home.“ Wrong again – see my previous points. 

inovator
Consultant
Experiences close enough will be diplicated.

@cybernettr, I've come to embrace looking like a dweeb in public, some of use do it naturally. Granted, public VR may take things too far!