Business & Money | Sunday 30 December, 2018 12:57 pm |

Al Hokair Entertainment, one of the leading family entertainment organisations in the region, is now taking the next big leap into the VR space with UK headquartered VR experts, Immotion.

 

With close to 91 active entertainment centers, under Al Hokair’s key entertainment brand ‘Sparky’s’, the group will now focus on embedding their centres with comprehensive virtual reality (VR) gaming zones by early 2019. Each VR zone will be situated within existing Al Hokair Time FECs and will have a minimum of 12 machines.

 

“In the first phase we will have four VR centres across Saudi Arabia and the UAE. We are getting ready for the millennials, they need more immersive games and they exactly know what they want from entertainment centers such as ours.  Over the last couple of years, we have seen a giant leap within the VR segment, and we see the growth to continue till atleast 2025,” said Mr. Mishal Al Hokair, the Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Entertainment Sector.

 

“Currently, the VR market in Saudi Arabia is in a nascent stage and we aim to make a massive impact with this agreement with Immotion. The most important aspect is the content within a game and they have an experienced team that can develop and implement this. Currently they are catering to major themeparks and this has instilled further confidence with regard to our collaboration,” added Mishal.

 

Immotion Group brings together world-class CGI experts, award-winning content creators, amazing storytellers and state-of-the-art motion platform technology to provide customers with immersive ‘out-of-home’ experiences. Formed from the merger of Studio Liddell – a Manchester-based CGI studio, and C2K – Los Angeles based filmmakers, Immotion Group combines over 40 years of experience in storytelling, content creation, advertising, art direction and communications.

 

“Today’s generation is consuming more entertainment content than ever before. This is estimated to be a multi-billion-dollar industry and we want to ensure that we establish our footprint slightly ahead of the industry,” added Mishal.

 

Current genres of VR gaming market are duplicating the most popular traditional video games’ genres. Specifically, simulations like shooters, races, and action VR games.  However, Al Hokair Entertainment plans to create a more diversified menu of games in order to cater to a wider audience, including young children and adults.

 

“We are looking at expanding our reach within Saudi Arabia, UAE and other regional markets. We believe that one of the key factors for the success of VR games is the engagement value of the whole VR concept. This ability of the gaming environment to reproduce a realistic representation of all human senses is something that engages the gamer. We are in the midst of conceptualizing such games with our partners,” concluded Mishal.

Sparky's amusement is the destination for fun and excitement for the whole family. Bowling alleys, family ice rink, 4D cinema, kids, adult’s rides and arcade games.