How to make money in VR

Virtual Reality Arcades is where the BIG MONEY is at for VR Developers. Exhibit A: Star Wars at Downtown Disney

Article by Micah Blumberg, Vision Agency MicrodoseVR.com, Organizer at SF VR 360, Neurohaxor at VRMA.io

STAR WARS: Secrets of the Empire was made by ILM xLabs and The Void.

In this article I am going to explain why the big money for VR developers is not in publishing to stores like Steam VR, Viveport or Oculus Home, but instead the big money is at VR Arcades.

STAR WARS at a VR Arcade in Downtown Disney, it’s rolling out to new locations soon.

In the next couple years developers with triple AAA VR titles should be looking to get installed in VR Arcades or LBE Location Based Experiences if they want to make real money.

Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire — ILMxLAB and The VOID — Immersive Entertainment Experience

Recently I sat down in Virtual Reality, via Facebook Spaces, to talk to Katherine Harris, a Technical Designer at Microsoft, Steve Lukas the CEO of Across Realities (formerly at Qualcomm Ventures), and Fifer Garbesi, VR Producer, CoFounder ARTandVR and producer of NeuroExplorerVR which was funded by Oculus, about LBE VR, Location Based Entertainment with Virtual Reality, aka VR Arcades. Importantly we discussed the future of what LBE VR can bring to the education space, but also why it’s where VR developers are making the most money.

Katherine and Steve actually went to Downtown Disney to try the Star Wars: The Void Experience and so they were able to talk about their experiences, no spoilers I promise. Fifer and I had also previously tried VR Arcades and Location Based Experiences so we were also able to discuss the experience.

In the VR Podcast above I mentioned how I saw a presentation by Survios at VRX Intelligence 2017. In that presentation, which I filmed, and you can watch below, the executive from Survios talked about how their application, called Raw Data which was one of the first VR games to make a million dollars in sales on Steam VR.

When Survios’s Raw Data game made more than a million dollars it was at the time big news, especially because so few developers have made real money in VR.

Survios' Raw Data may be VR's first hit game, with more $1 million in sales

What surprised me in this talk was learning about how Survios has been making most of their money being in VR Arcades, such as at the Imax theater VR Locations. Survios is now also publishing VR content made by other VR developers, simply because the money is there as a publisher as well.

Here is the video I filmed at VRX 2017 featuring Survios talking about how they make money in VR.

Here is Shannon Norrell talking about LBE VR and why he thinks location based entertainment is the future of VR

Shannon Norrell From HP, VR Evangelist and Rick Banks with Optitrack demoing the Optitrack system with the HP Omen VR Backpack

So which developers are going to succeed? Which apps are going to make it into your local arcade next? Well one can get a hint at the upcoming GDC Game Developer Conference 2018 and VRDC Virtual Reality Developer Conference 2018. You will want to check out VR apps that makers like Valve, HTC Vive, Oculus, Microsoft, and Sony are showcasing.

Here is the show reel from the HTC CES booth at 2018, and in this video you can see which apps that HTC thinks are really hot, apps like Arizona Sunshine, MicrodoseVR, and more. Any of these apps could be huge money makers at your VR Arcade, publishers should be looking to work with the best content developers, to bring the best VR Content, to local VR Arcades all over the world, in every major metropolitan area, and in smaller towns as well.

In our final recap video from this year’s CES conference in Las Vegas, we give you an insight into everything HTC VIVE and VIVE pro related

This is a preview of MicrodoseVR

At CES 2018 we showcased the latest demo of MicrodoseVR that incorporates EEG and ECG signals to drive changes to light, sound, and tactile effects with a biofeedback faceplate from the folks at Muse. As a team, we at the Vision Agency are seeking to engineer next generation biofeedback experiences with VR, and to help create the kind of application that Doctors may seek to prescribe to patients once the FDA approves VR applications for medical use for pain and anxiety relief.

Anxiety? Pain? Your Doctor may prescribe VR with biofeedback.

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