VR arcades are becoming more and more popular. CtrlV was the first Vive arcade to launch in North America, resting in Ontario, Canada. Most people following this scene have already heard about VRCade, The Void, and StarCade as well, in addition to the absolutely enormous VR arcade scene that’s rising in China.
But this week we got something a bit different. Notion Theory, a product design and development company, launched notionVR, the first virtual reality arcade on the East Coast of the United States. The notionVR arcade is located at MakeOffices’ Dupont Circle coworking community in Washington, D.C.
Stephen Kae, Lead Growth Engineer at Notion Theory, reached out to UploadVR over email to share news and updates about the grand opening. “We have lots of games and apps and will continue to purchase more,” Kae said. “Although some our favorites include: Raw Data, the Brookhaven Experiment, Fruit Ninja and of course Tilt Brush.”
The location is starting off with only a single Vive station available for renting, in a 10×10 square, but they plan to introduce more units as allowed. You can reserve blocks of time on the notionVR website, which are available in 30-minute chunks at $15 each. The price and package is scalable as well depending on the size of your group.
With only a single Vive station, it’s difficult to imagine the arcade can fully take advantage of the multiplayer aspects in games like Raw Data and Hover Junkers, but the full game list does show a focus on breadth of experiences. The games selected are many of the ones we include on our list favorite HTC Vive games so far.
notionVR does project the display so that all of the non-VR visitors can still watch and enjoy the content, which is a good compromise.
“As you know the use cases for virtual reality are really endless – we’d love to have expand the threshold of thinking for those who haven’t had the chance to experience virtual reality,” Kae said. “We’ll definitely be hosting sessions geared to students across the STEM fields and will be continuing to expand our portfolio of games/experience.”
At the launch event, Notion Theory hosted a presentation about the power and potential of virtual reality. Hopefully they’re able to expand the venue sooner rather than later if the demand is there for more access.
