VR Growing with eSports Competitions
Virtuix Boasts Successful Worldwide Tournaments
In an effort to get more players into their virtual reality systems, Virtuix put together a monthly Omniverse eSports Tournament with a $50,000 prize pool for the year sponsored by HTC and HP. Early results show that it’s working.
The four-day contests typically feature two-player teams battling on one of 20 Omniverse games. The top-10 teams win a combination of cash and prizes like HTC Vive headsets and HP headphones.
From Jan. 24-27, Virtuix held its first sponsored tournament of the year using the Coliseum level of Omni Arena, a first-person shooter where players survive waves of robots by shooting the attackers before they destroy the in-game power cores.
With 30 registered participating locations in 11 countries, company founder Jan Goetgeluk said operators saw a significant increase in play and revenue during the eSports tournament.
“Playtime at participating locations increased 108 percent on average,” he noted. “During the contest week, the number of plays on Omni systems more than doubled compared to the previous week.”
What’s also impressive, Goetgeluk said, is that players don’t just try the Omni – they keep coming back.
“The physical element, combined with multiplayer gameplay and competition, results in high repeat play,” he said. “We’re not a stand-in-place VR attraction that players try just once. Our core players come back every week.”
The top-20 teams in the January contest played the game seven times, on average. The top-three teams, in order to secure their impressive positions on the leaderboard, played an average of 12 times. The winners, Matteus and CKiLLA, played at The Nexus VR Arcade in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
The Feb. 21-24 contest featured the single-player VRZ: Torment and on the schedule for March 21-24 is the Metropolis level of Omni Arena.
“To participate in our contests, locations need to have the latest and greatest equipment,” Goetgeluk said. “Most of our locations are still upgrading to the Omni 2.0 system, so we’ll see a lot more locations participating in the future as we continue to grow.”
With more than 3,000 Omni motion platforms shipped around the globe, Virtuix has developed a separate upgrade kit so operators don’t have to buy entirely new systems.
The Omniverse VR Arena, unveiled at IAAPA 2018 and officially launching March 1, will play a key role in the contests in upcoming months. Developed in partnership with Funovation, the new attraction features four individual Omni VR setups – ideal for the eSports tourneys.
For operators interested in the company, they’ll be exhibiting the Omni platform at the Funovation booth (#1323) at the Amusement Expo. More information, including registration sign-up for future contests, is available at www.virtuix.com.
