Sandbox VR mentioned it has surpassed $200 million in lifetime gross sales for its location-based digital actuality leisure venues.
The milestone comes after a strong 2024, throughout which Sandbox VR generated $75 million in gross sales and had greater than 1.4 million gamers throughout its areas. In March 2025 alone, the corporate’s areas drew greater than 150,000 gamers, and the corporate expects month-to-month gamers to develop in tandem with retailer openings, mentioned Steve Zhao, CEO of Sandbox VR, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“Reaching $200 million in lifetime sales represents a significant achievement for Sandbox VR and validates our mission to deliver immersive, social VR experiences that bring people together,” mentioned Zhao. “As we continue to expand globally through our franchise model, we’re seeing unprecedented demand from both operators and consumers who recognize the unique value of our offering.”
I performed quite a lot of experiences at Sandbox VR through the years, together with Deadwood Valley, a zombie staff shooter recreation — which I performed on the current Sport Builders Convention on the San Francisco location for Sandbox VR. That have makes use of a number of sensors strapped to your physique for a extra visceral expertise. It additionally makes use of HTC’s most up-to-date VR headset, which is made for location-based VR with options like simple cleansing.
Accelerating development by way of franchise growth
Because the starting of 2024, Sandbox VR has bought 83 franchise items in partnership with 21 operators, bringing the full to almost 150 shops in growth with 34 operators right now. This represents a sixfold enhance in deal signings over the previous 12 months. This 12 months, the corporate expects to extend its complete footprint by over 50% with the opening of 29 new areas.
The sixtieth international Sandbox VR location—opened with franchise companions LOL Leisure—opens in Philadelphia this month. The corporate finalized a partnership with JLG Ventures in March to open Sandbox VR areas in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
“The rapid growth of our franchise program really highlights the power of our business model and the strong demand for premium VR experiences.” mentioned Aylang Lou, senior vp of shops at Sandbox VR, in an announcement. “Our franchise partners see the unique value Sandbox VR offers – from our proprietary tech and exclusive content to our proven operational model that delivers impressive results.”
Zhao added, “Now that we have enough stores to validate the market. Since last year, we pretty much just doubled down on franchising. What that does for us, long term, is that the more stores we have, the more we can invest in content. And that basically means we can have more game launches per year.”
With extra launches per 12 months, Sandbox VR may also work with extra companions like Netflix, he mentioned.
“As we get big enough, there could be a day where we can actually open it up and start doing publishing,” Zhao mentioned. “The vision of Sandbox VR is to be a unique platform and work with other VR developers as well as our own.”
In shifting to franchised areas, Sandbox VR doesn’t must outlay as a lot in capital expenditures and may as an alternative use extra of its capital for recreation growth.
“We get less of the pie [with franchises], but the royalty is pretty strong for us. And now there’s just a tremendous number of locations we can open,” Zhao mentioned.
Client engagement driving income
Client enthusiasm for Sandbox VR’s choices continues to develop. A mean of 117,000 gamers skilled the corporate’s immersive adventures every month in 2024, and in 2025, the corporate is projecting a mean of 150,000 month-to-month gamers throughout international areas. This constant engagement demonstrates the robust enchantment of Sandbox VR’s distinctive providing.
Sandbox VR is creating the way forward for leisure by constructing the world’s most immersive experiences utilizing bleeding-edge digital actuality know-how. The corporate’s patented motion-tracking know-how, which captures the actions of a participant’s whole physique, combines with a high-quality haptic system to offer gamers with realism and full immersion that’s not doable with dwelling VR or different location-based VR platforms.
Sandbox VR’s platform combines superior know-how with highly-intuitive performance. Visitors’ personal our bodies act as their recreation controllers; all they must do is step into the digital world and take part within the motion unfolding throughout them.
All Sandbox VR experiences are developed by in-house triple-A gaming studios in Hong Kong and Vancouver, led by recreation trade veterans and are particularly designed for teams to play as social experiences. Groups of as much as six freely roam and discover digital worlds collectively, whereas counting on one another to succeed.
Zhao mentioned Gen Z gamers and Millennials alike are among the many finest clients, with good development throughout the U.S. and Europe, particularly the UK and Germany. Increasingly of the company coming to Sandbox VR are underneath the age of 25. It’s now about 40% of the viewers, Zhao mentioned.
Beforehand, Sandbox VR was bringing on maybe one franchise operator each quarter, however ranging from Q3 of 2024, the corporate began signing about seven operators per quarter.
“We’ve seen a tremendous amount momentum, and some of these operators sign up for more than one unit. That’s having a compound effect of the number of Sandbox stores,” Zhao mentioned.
Usually talking, it takes about 9 months to convey up the primary location as soon as the contract is signed. However after that, operators can convey up areas extra rapidly.
On the company degree, Sandbox VR has about 130 workers; that quantity doesn’t embody the roles at franchises or internally owned areas.
Zhao mentioned the corporate is now exploring shifting past video games. It’s engaged on a cultural studying expertise and can share extra about that later.
The corporate additionally continues to make the march towards full-body VR experiences, and because it does so, Zhao believes that it’ll get larger and greater audiences. A greater expertise will convey out extra folks of all ages.
The expansion is anomalous in some methods. On the current Sport Builders Convention, a variety of builders informed Zhao that VR has been struggling these days. It’s arduous for VR builders making video games for the house. However Zhao believes that his firm can scale extra organically because it will increase its variety of shops.
“The Holodeck experience is what people want, and that can’t exist inside people’s homes because we need multiple technologies to make that work. It’s not one boxed consumable product. So our bet was to move just outside of home. It’s like the opposite of arcades,” he mentioned.
