One of the only companies brave enough to launch a product into the teeth of the pandemic was VRsenal. In October, the company announced that the VR lightsaber game would be available globally after delivering to Dave and Busters for their chain-wide deployment. 

Since then, operators have installed close to 200 units.  It’s been challenging to tease out the performance data for a couple of reasons:

1. The pandemic has made it difficult to find decent comparable stats. Some states were wide open, others were closed, and still more operated at a fraction of their capacity. 
2. The first deployment went to Dave and Busters, which has to be careful about sharing any kind of financial data as a public company.  
3. Many of the initial units went into locations that already had Beat Saber installed. With the cabinets looking close enough to identical, there might be some cannibalization of revenue. Due to the pandemic’s impact, I’m unable to look at previous periods to calculate a cannibalization factor. 

Despite these challenges, I have enough info to share some insights that hopefully put this new lightsaber VR game in perspective for the FEC owner considering Star Wars VR. 

So, Is It Earning?

• I spoke to a smaller bowling-centric FEC that claimed it earned more than their top game’s weekly revenue in just two days and represents 11% of their game revenue. 
• Across a more extensive set of locations with large arcades (each over 100 games and over $2MM in revenue), Star Wars is averaging 4% of total arcade collections. 
• In locations where operators installed Star Wars in addition to Beat Saber and VR Rabbids, combined earnings for both VRSenal games average $1600 per week during COVID.  That’s almost identical to VR Rabbids, which is a two-seat ride.
• Compared to the leading 4-player attended VR attraction, the combination of Beat Saber and Star Wars earned 152% more on average.  Then there are the ongoing staffing costs. 
• Operators are pricing the game between $5-8 as best I can tell. The game length is about 4 minutes with tutorial and onboarding. 

I spoke to two influential operators underwhelmed by the performance of their Star Wars games. I think their expectation was with the Star Wars license it would crush Beat Saber’s earnings, both being lightsaber VR games.  But if you remember this post, I claimed that Beat Saber was a once-in-a-generation game. If you didn’t grab one while they were available, you missed out. 

From what I can gather, Star Wars is the number one earning VR Arcade game* on the market right now, both based on size and capacity. It’s even out-earning much bigger attractions with twice the capacity taking 10X the floor space.  

Will Lightsaber Dojo Earn For You?

It’s hard to predict what a game will earn in any particular location as there are so many variables. If you currently operate any VR, this should give you enough info to ballpark how it Star Wars Lightsaber Dojo might perform in your arcade. If you don’t own any VR yet, download my Free VR Buyers Guide and then let’s chat about what the best initial VR investment might be for you.

Star Wars VR might be earning well now, but I can show you how to increase your earnings substantially. I’ll give you my top recommendations for getting the most out of your VR lightsaber game in my next post.  

(*not including rides – those as very different categories. I will do a roundup of the rides in another post.)

Disclosure: I have past and current commercial arrangements with several companies in the VR market (many of them in fact). In those arrangements, I am typically offering strategic advisement. Occasionally I help with strategic sales. Sometimes I am paid referral fees and commissions on sales where I have played a role. VRsenal is a current client.