#1281 – New Phase in XR Investment – Part 2

AI Constructed Brief

Leading investors should note the evolving XR amusement landscape, marked by major restructurings, closures, and emerging trends. The Dutch VR operator The Park shifts focus to cultural experiences amid management changes, while high-profile VR adventures like Felix & Paul’s Interstellar ARC and Space Explorers face abrupt closures due to poor audience turnout and high costs, raising concerns about market viability. Conversely, social VR platforms like MirraArena expand rapidly across China, demonstrating strong consumer engagement. Additionally, mixed reality installations like Ripley’s Aquarium’s ‘Venture Realm’ utilizing Apple Vision Pro signify early adoption of MR in Western entertainment venues, highlighting new growth opportunities.

Full Stinger Report

This concluding second-part of our coverage continuing a XR focused look at the application of the latest phase of VR into the amusement and attraction sector. This latest coverage reveals the changing landscape, with major restructurings and closure of some influential installations.

Developments in VR Arenas

One of the many VR arena developers in the European sector is The Park. The Netherland based operation had been launched as a corporate venture by telecommunication giant Telenet Group N.V.., along with partnership with a venture capital fund. It was revealed in August that the corporation has decided to sell their involvement to a holding company led by The Park’s founder. The operation has developed arena-based VR experiences and The Park VR software management platform.

As reported exclusively by the Stinger Report, The Park had rebranded from The Park Playground in 2025 and had seen restructuring in management. At that time the operation had stated to have 14 venues running their unique VR arena entertainment experience, (five of these sites run directly, with the rest as franchises). The company claimed that across these sites they had 50 active “fields” or arenas powered by The Park VR platform. The company had originally been founded in 2018, with investment from leading regional parties including Telenet Group.

With this news, the new holding company that will run The Park from a day-to-day operation will be led by its previous founder, taking over from their CEO who joined the operation three years ago. Speaking to local media about the move it was reported that The Park is now looking to focus on “cultural” VR experiences, with plans over the next 12-months to open an additional nine venues. Telenet would state that The Park VR division no longer aligned with the company’s strategic focus on telecom and TV entertainment.

Speaking directly with the new management operation, they confirmed their plans will now focus on smoothly integrating cultural VR experiences that match the quality standard of their custom interactive experiences. This will drive turnkey / franchise solutions. Though no detail regarding the status of the remaining 14 sites was given at this time. It was revealed that the current CEO will be stepping down as the operation enters transition.

Major VR Adventure Developer Close

The volitivity of the VR consumer sector was amplified into the LBE XR scene with the closure of a high-profile virtual adventure project and its development. Opened in 2025 at the expansion to AREA15, ‘Interstellar ARC’, represented a 20,000-sq.,ft., immersive experience, with guests traversing themed environments, as well as donning VR headsets to experience a sci-fi interstellar space story, involving the salvation of species on planet Earth.

What was described of the blending of mixed reality with interactive storytelling. The experience that the company had labelled “the future of entertainment” had received much promotion – even using on its web page the phrase “The Hype is Real” and promoting 4.7 five-star Google reviews. Publicly, developer Felix & Paul had been incredibly enthusiastic about the success of the Interstellar experience, even speaking on looking for new venues in US cities to roll out too.

But after only ten months since opening, what the operation called the “World’s largest VR Experience”, and the booking system for the venue stopped taking orders and blocked booking all together by August 19th. Finally, well-placed sources confirmed that the operation had ceased business and was in the process of working out what its next moves would be. The immersive experience had only recently been the recipient of a “Auggie Award”, charting excellence and innovation in the XR arena, in the “Best Location-Based Entertainment” category. The founders of the operation carrying out interviews that contradicted rumored issues with the operation.

The experience developed by Felix & Paul Studio, a pioneer in the development of immersive video and VR content, having won numerous awards for their work. Having over a decade of experience, one of the first to work in the medium, founded in 2013, and working on Samsung GearVR / Oculus projects. The suspension of the Interstellar ARC experience came the same day as social media sources revealed that the studio had also closed. This the latest of the high-profile early VR studios that had been thought “too big to fail”. But with the pulling of Meta’s VR support many closely affiliated operations seemed to have suffered.

The concept of Interstellar followed much of the same profile of the studios previous virtual adventure project. Called ‘Space Explorers: Infinite’ – the immersive VR experience covering 12,500-sq.,ft., having guests walking round immersive environment with a central VR free-roam element using off the shelf consumer VR headsets. First launched in 2021, the project was funded in part by The Fonds d’Investissement de la culture et des communications (FICC) and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC). The travelling experience that had started in Canada and travelled to many American cities. The whole project building off the award winning work by Felix & Paul Studios and PHI Studio had done with NASA, taking movie cameras to the International Space Station, and resulted in the consumer VR content ‘The ISS Experience’.

At the time of writing the last installation of the ‘Space Explorers: Infinite’ attraction had been in Atlanta, Georgia, opening in March – but this installation had closed by August 13, a few days before the sister Las Vegas experience. A smaller version of the experience was also turned into a VR free-roaming arena software package called ‘Space Explorers: The ISS Experience’. A number of these travelling virtual adventure experiences are still operational in cities internationally, including run in collaboration with Eclipso and Fever, and at this time all installations of the software license still seemed operational.

The reason for the closure of ‘Interstellar ARC’ was put down by well-placed sources as failure to attract a reliable audience to the attraction. Compounded by a very high rent from AREA15 for their location. Also, an inability to adequately promote what the experience was like inside the imposing building, part of the new AREA15 Zone 2 expansion. The suspension of Interstellar after only 10-months of operation, along with the rushed closure of Space Explorers in Atlanta after only five months has started alarm bells ringing regarding the viability of some of the Virtual Adventure installations.  Even more the implosion of Felix & Paul after such a high profile adds further weight to concerns regarding consumer VR developers’ survivability in the current conditions.

Observation – following the closure of high-profile immersive experiences employing dedicated VR components there is an obvious concern regarding the viability of this approach in the market. The Stinger Report was one of the first to reveal the closure of the award winning ‘Jeff Wayne’s The War of The Worlds: The Experience’ during May of this year. And now we follow this with revealing the closures of the award winning ‘Interstellar ARC’ along with the hurried closure of the ‘Space Explorers: Infinite’ – we can expect more scrutiny regarding the viability of this approach to immersive tech.

Deploying VR Socially

The changing application of VR into the entertainment scene has been constantly evolving as the business moves from the hype stage to the ROI stage. This is adequately illustrated by the news from VR startup MIRRA Immersive with their ‘MirraArena’ platform.

We have reported on the system before as they established their first facility in Bellevue, Washington which opened in 2024. The concept offers a strong social entertainment element to a free-roaming multiplayer VR experience. The audience and the hospitality creating a unique experience that seemed to vibe with the move towards competitive socializing. This saw the news last year that Chinese Jackie Chan cinema chain had installed the system.

The news is that the operation has expanded to seven Chinese installations of this “Cinetainment” offering across the region. And that it is proving a strong draw. The company revealed to the Stinger Report they had seen at their Hangzhou site record 9,510 headset plays on the VR arena. And charting the social popularity of the system, a player’s TikTok video had achieved some 3.9m views and was growing.

Still early days for the platform and establishing a hold on the market. The company currently operates two modes: “Open Play” and “Showdown”. “Open Play” is aimed at FEC’s, with 10-minute rounds; some of their partners in China charging about $7 per game. While “Showdown” is a one-hour experience, where four teams compete across five different games, with two players from each team rotating into the arena each round. At their Bellevue flagship site, they run the “Showdown” model at $30 per person – focused at attracting birthday parties and corporate events

With a selection of some 15-games to choose from on the ‘MirraArena’, though the developer confirmed that their title ‘Sweet Kitchen’ is their most popular, a frantic virtual food preparation and serving experience, hilarious for the watching audience. A session on the game trending on TikTok generating over 34m views, the latest viral immersive entertainment post. The mixing of VR and audience experiences is becoming a factor in the new phase of multi-player XR experiences.

Deploying MR

The LBE XR scene is not purely about the VR application of the tech, we have also seen the deployment of Augmented and Mixed Reality systems into the scene. But this has proven a turbulent aspect of the market. This was best illustrated by the recent collapse of Enklu who incorporated the operation Verse Immersive – as we covered in Stinger Report #1274. The immersive holographic theatrical experience developer had offered an AR experience originally using Microsoft Hololens AR see-through glasses. The company had been linked to announcements to open their then standalone attraction at several venues, but this fell through when they entered US Chapter 7 liquidation and closed its operations in May.

One of those announced deals was between Verse Immersive and Ripley Entertainment, who had signed an agreement with the AR company to install their attraction in several of the chain’s venues. It was also revealed that Ripley Entertainment had been an unsecured creditor of the parent company Enklu. With the liquidation of the company this left Ripley with several venues that had installed the AR attraction and needed at best a replacement. But this hurdle has not diminished their interest in utilizing the new immersive technology. And this brings us to the beginning of August and the announcement of an agreement with AR attraction developer AStation, towards installing a new outdoor mixed reality experience called ‘Venture Realm’ at the ‘Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies’, located at Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

We reported on the AStation MR experiences in our IAAPA’25 coverage of the outdoor exhibits. The company having opened several Chinese MR installations and were looking to establish their Apple Vision Pro powered outdoor attraction. The use of the AVP’s pass-through immersive technology defining this as MR. The Ripley’s aquarium first opened in 2000 and houses numerous sea creatures. The 20-minute ($19.99-p/p) outdoor MR attraction (described as a “interactive holographic experience”) had opened on June the 11th and is now fully operational for the summer season. This installation is the first step in the Western deployment of AStation’s MR experiences in the aquarium, heritage and zoological sector. We are waiting to learn how this initial installation works with the local audience to the venue, and further plans to expand in North America from the MR developer.

This marks the first time that we have seen Apple Vision Pro headsets deployed as LBE XR platforms in the Western market. While there have been several demonstrations and popup brand activation marketing attractions. This is the first time a permanent LBE installation has used the Spatial Computing platform. The MR experience seems to offer both the mythical beasts and dinosaur experiences we reported on trialling during the IAAPA’25 event. We hope to have a full report on the roll out plans for this installation, and if other Ripley venues will be incorporating this, in coming weeks.