RePlay Magazine

Cooney sits with Jan Goetgeluk, founder and CEO of Virtuix Omni at the VR Strategy Conference in San Francisco. The group launched on Kickstarter in 2013, after Jan started working on the Omni in 2012. The company sells an omni-directional treadmill that hopes to further immerse players into VR games.

Cooney talks with Greg Lombardo, who works in the IP world with 20th Century Fox. The two talk about the future of IP in the industry and how new tech can augment even the greatest brands.

Cooney talks with Kevin Williams, organizer of the Future of Immersive Leisure Conference, about the theme of the show, and what's coming that could revolutionize the amusement industry.

Bob Cooney and Brooks Brown of Starbreeze Studios, the game developer behind the successful Payday series, speak at VR Los Angeles. Brown and the company built an extremely high-end headset, the Star VR. Brown and Cooney talk about the catching up the industry needs to do, how the promise of VR was made over 30 years ago and the pressure that companies are feeling to deliver on that promise. Brown argues that there is exciting content for VR out there, but the problem is curating it and making it accessible to the masses.

Bob Cooney talks with Ryan Wang of Outpost Capital, a SF-based venture capital fund that focuses on the new frontier of AR/VR technologies. The company operates mainly in China, and Cooney and Wang dive into the differences in commercial and at-home VR in the two countries, why China is many steps ahead and what the U.S. can learn from the industry's actions there.

What are among the hottest trends in FECs today? Escape rooms and VR. Combining the two is the idea behind Breakscape Games. The company’s Co-Founder Qi Hu sits down with Bob Cooney to discuss Breakscape’s 2- to 6-player VR escape room experience, play pricing, saturation (or not) in the escape room business, the idea that VR and/or AR (augmented reality) are the next logical steps, the social, multi-player experience and more. To learn more, visit www.breakscapegames.com.