[ad_1]
The magic of Sandbox takes place in a largely empty room. Wall-mounted equipment (VR helmets, PC backpacks, and toy badault rifles) is more than a hint that there is more to do, but nothing really happens until your team is not attached and that the helmets do not push you in a fast pace. wave shooter.
The start-up, which has seven branches in Asia and North America, has convinced many high-level investors ready to subscribe to Sandbox's vision for virtual reality.
Sandbox VR has just closed a $ 68 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, which involved Floodgate, Stanford University, TriplePoint Capital, CRCM and Alibaba, as reported by Business Insider.
Andreessen Horowitz's investment in Sandbox VR comes more than 5 years after the firm made a big bet on Oculus VR. At the time, Oculus had helped spark the excitement behind the idea that regular consumers would soon be in fashion. Although the company has seen significant progress in achieving this vision under Facebook, it has still not kept pace with the excessive expectations that some investors had set for this vision.
In 2019, Andrew Chen of Andreessen Horowitz still sees many opportunities at home, but he is excited about what can be activated when VR can free itself from some of its constraints.
"I think we realized the experience that we need to have a different form factor here. You want the hardware to be $ 200 or the same as a console, "Chen tells TechCrunch. "I think we'll see virtual reality disbadociate and be its own form factor with larger, inherently multisocial spaces with real people and high-end hardware like motion capture and haptic vests."
The company founded in Hong Kong is far from being the first virtual reality company to bet on high-end experiences in retail outlets; Startups such as The Void have also mobilized significant capital with leading partners such as Disney, pushing them into busy locations, but Sandbox investors recognize the company's strengths in scalability.
"We tried everything, what we really liked [Sandbox] Was it really an archetypal issue as a modest sized room that you can really put anywhere, "Chen said. "So it's a really scalable thing that you can imagine putting inside a mall or a store. You can fit a single venue to 10 or 20 rooms in the same way that a movie theater can have 12 screens. "
Sandbox's $ 68 million fundraising comes amidst a general slowdown in the virtual reality market, but as more and more investors turn to adjacent technologies such as augmented reality , the sponsors of the startup see its strengths in terms of links with users. For Mike Maples, a Floodgate partner, this investment represents a first in the field of virtual reality.
"A lot of AR startups are get more Warning because people say, AR can be sure all the phones and It at wider distribution, "said Maples." When I experimented with this product, I got the impression that people will say, "This product is my world."
You can learn more about how Sandbox VR has established links with its investors in this Medium message published by the company's product manager (hint: the story is about In-N-Out).
Source link
