We must expand consumers' VR experiences through VR theme parks
The LBE VR experience will eventually extend to the home VR market.

Last month, KT opened a VR game room called 'Bright' in Sinchon. GPM also expanded its 'Monster VR' store at COEX, following its location in Songdo. VR gaming is evolving beyond simple VR experiences to include wireless walking attraction games, expanding into the form of theme parks.

Moon Seong-hyeon, Director of Brotin, explained, “The number of VR rooms, which was around 150 at the end of 2017, increased to about 250 in just the first quarter of this year,” adding, “The number of people enjoying the game is increasing despite the hourly billing. VR rooms can be operated on a small scale in the form of pop-up stores, or on a large scale with many rooms.”

Why is the market shifting toward LBE (location-based entertainment) rather than the home VR market?

Choi Jeong-hwan, Vice President of Skonec Entertainment, stated, “In the early stages of VR, the hardware market developed first. However, the price was a burden for individual users to purchase devices, and there was a lack of usable content.” He added, “Although there were many content developers, they struggled to operate stores due to a lack of performance.” Consequently, he said, the company prioritized targeting LBE VR to enable customers to experience VR.

Park Sung-joon, CEO of GPM, also stated that they did not start with the commercial viability of the offline market in mind from the beginning. It became an opportunity to run large shopping malls and theme parks amidst the limitations of revenue from online content.

As large shopping malls and outlets continued to face similar competition, they stepped forward to utilize VR as cultural content to attract online customers back to offline spaces. CEO Park Seong-jun stated, "The difficult issue we faced while running the VR experience zone business was real estate."

VR experience zones require a lot of space and high installation costs. On the other hand, it is a business with a fixed maximum number of daily visitors and revenue. He added, “We opened at Triple Street in Songdo, Incheon, and this time we opened on the first basement floor of COEX. The commercial areas of the two locations are completely different.”

The point is that in established neighborhood commercial districts, repeat visits by families influence revenue, whereas in high-traffic areas like COEX, this impact is less significant. CEO Park emphasized, "Currently, access is available in the form of an all-access pass. As a result, the influence of the commercial district where the store is located cannot be ignored."

VR rooms are relatively expensive compared to services such as PC cafes, karaoke rooms, and escape room cafes. Regarding this, Vice President Choi Jeong-hwan explained, "Investment costs are higher than for past services. Consequently, usage fees are inevitably higher." He added, "Currently, we are in a situation where labor costs are unavoidable regarding safety and how consumers can use VR devices without guidance." He added that prices would drop as hardware devices become wireless and consumers become accustomed to VR content.

Although the number of places to enjoy VR offline has increased, accessibility is still not easy. Regarding future market changes, Vice President Choi stated, “I think the home VR market and the LBE VR market will grow sequentially.” He added, “Since few people own VR devices yet, they have no choice but to enjoy it offline, and it is important to expand experiences in this way. Once devices become more widely available and multiplayer capabilities are established, the market will expand to include home use.”

CEO Park also predicted, “Urban theme parks will grow due to their easy accessibility, diverse content, and the advantage of being enjoyable for the whole family,” adding, “Although the experience provided by LBE VR and home VR are different, they will influence each other and grow together.”