Month: June 2023

The expanding international leisure entertainment sector sees the latest station on the caravan route, with Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Along with Middle East and North American (MENA) business, we also cover the developments in the eSports and Competitive Gaming sector.   Middle East Entertainment Sunshine A very crowded first half of 2023 saw many international entertainment exhibitions. March had seen the Dubai Entertainment Amusement and Leisure Exhibition (DEAL), and the Principality was about to see the gathering of Saudi amusement and attraction investment – the Saudi Entertainment and Amusement (SEA’23) Expo at the Riyadh International Convention & Exhibition Center. The event was held in conjunction with the SLS Expo (focused on immersive audio and lighting).  The need for a dedicated trade event for this region was underlined by the announcement of the explosion of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) investment […]

The “XR” (extreme/extended reality) phase of development in the sector took center stage during May and June. XR is being seen as the natural progression of the immersive tech scene – being championed against that of VR. XR has the ability to offer both a complete virtual environment, and one that superimposes virtual elements over real-world imagery. This is achieved with either optical “See-Through” via glasses, or video “Pass-Through” via cameras – this encapsulates the aspirations of both VR and AR. While many also use the term MR (Mixed Reality) to describe the application, the overarching term of XR seems to have become the new popular descriptor.  The Battleground for XR The Augmented World Expo (AWE) USA 2023 took place at the end of May, entering June at the Santa Clara convention center in California. The event was celebrating its […]

Continuing the ever-expanding coverage of the Social Entertainment emergence in the out-of-home sector, and we cover the only wholly focused event on the sector, along with charting further industry developments in our exclusive coverage of the scene. Competitive Socialising 2023: Gathering  The second Competitive Socialising 2023 (ComSoc’23) event took place in London at the end of May, held in South London’s ‘The Lighthouse’ theater. Under the tagline “the power of play”, the leading lights of the trade came together, sharing observations on this growing market sector. This is a market appearing on many investors’ and operators’ radar and feeding this growing event.  Competitive Socializing was abbreviated to the term #ComSoc for the event – whether this will catch on as a term is unknown, the same way that the attempt to use the term #Socialtainment as an abbreviation has fallen […]