In case you missed it, we decided not to move ahead with the LEXRA Summit in Austin in August. That decision was part of the fallout of the Enklu bankruptcy filing. You can read more about it in this recent edition of extra!

So we went back to the drawing board and are evaluating a couple of venues in Dallas for early October. We hope to have an official announcement within a week. Sign up to make sure you’re the first to know here.

We are also scouting for venues to host our first LEXRA Research Breakfast meetings in London in Sept, and Orlando in November. We will be partnering with some of the leading research companies following immersive LBE and plan to share the freshest insights available to help you make more informed decisions as you go into 2027.

Research firms forecasting LBE, Immersive, and XR have been notoriously inaccurate. Before the pandemic, I arranged for a CES floor tour for executives at Citigroup. They had just projected that the metaverse market would reach $8 trillion to $13 trillion by 2030. Oops. I take those reports with a huge grain of salt. Or more like a salt lick.

Like many VR industry insiders, I predicted that VR would be mainstream consumer tech within five years. I made that prediction every year for 10 years. I am a slow learner.

Now I look for leading indicators. Not forecasts, but actual data emerging from the market. And this one took me by surprise. Google Trends shows a 6X surge in searches for the term “VR Near Me.” I’ve used Claude code to try to find any viable reasons this could be happening beyond people looking for…VR near me, and we have not been able to. So I am going put on my rose colored glasses and say maybe, just maybe, all the new amazing location-based VR experiences are gaining interest.

We know that Sandbox VR is killing it with their Netflix partnership. Zero Latency announced both Jumanji and Cyberpunk 2077, which received lots of media attention. And new experiences from Fever, Excurio, and the new Black Mirror from Univrse have people excited about location-based VR storytelling experiences that go beyond gaming. We will keep tracking this to see where it heads over the rest of the year.

LEXRA is honored to have Raphael Fulcher join us to head up our market research committee. He’s working on our research strategy and has been reaching out to operators to create industry benchmark data. More on that soon.

Exhibiting at IAAPA or another trade show this year? This is for you. I’ve done hundreds of trade shows and invested millions of budget. I’ve discovered some hacks and want to share them with you so you can save money and sell more. And maybe, if you haven’t yet, you’ll join LEXRA with the extra money you make. If you missed session one,

I was in Malaysia earlier this year and noticed there were two Another World locations in Kuala Lumpur. I’d visited one in Koh Samui, Thailand, a few years ago (Check out that episode of the Being Virtual Show), and wanted to see how Another World has evolved.

I worked with the original founder of Another World on their go-to-market in 2018. They later merged with another firm, the VR arcade company The Deep, turning the helm over to its co-founder, Vasily Patrenko. Since then, Another World has built what appears to be the world’s largest network of VR arcades under a single brand. They list 232 active locations on their websites across 38 countries, and are opening new sites rapidly. Check out the video on YouTube.

I will be hosting a LIVE Deep Dive with Vasily this Thursday. You can tune in and ask questions by registering at this link.

Got questions about anything? Join my next FREE in next Monday, June 29th. It’s your opportunity to…ask me anything!

Coming up in two weeks, join Brent Bushnell as he hosts David Bardos from Univrse in our next LEXRA Huddle. They’ll talk about the new Black Mirror Immersive experience, which has launched in Montreal, New York, and Madrid and is expanding rapidly. We’ve made the Huddles open to anyone now - NO LEXRA membership required. Register at this link

And if you haven’t joined LEXRA yet, what are you waiting for? No, seriously, just reply to this email and tell what the holdup or hesitancy is. I want to know - it will help us improve and add more value for you and the other members.

Stay immersed,

Bob