Global cinema brand Imax is scaling down its VR operations as it struggles to make the technology pay.
Having opened up VR experiences in several of its cinemas across the world, Imax has since closed one of its two in New York and Shanghai.
In a report by Variety, the first time the company spoke publicly about its issues was during a Q1 earnings call where CEO Richard Gelfond said that despite a positive consumer reaction, the numbers were not there with only one of its seven centres getting anywhere near Imax’s financial expectations.
In the same call, CFO Patrick S McClymont hinted at further closures saying that they expect to reach a decision on the remaining sites over the coming months.
The company’s initial roadmap was to pilot up to 10 locations when it began its foray into VR in 2017, with a view to expanding throughout its 1000-plus chain should the test prove successful as it appeared it was going to be in the early few months.
However, Variety reports that Imax faced issues with the strength of the software and experiences its hardware was running, principally, not enough popular, licensed content to attract paying customers outside of the traditional gamer demographic.
Imax had in fact set up a US$50m fund to co-produce VR content but has to date only used a fraction of that amount to come up with one title, Justice League.
The issue, says Variety, is that it was only exclusive to them for two weeks, after which it released on the consumer market, rendering their out-of-home offering largely impotent. And this appears to be the problem with nearly all of its other content so, despite Imax using motion chairs and higher quality headsets, the numbers its locations are returning simply aren’t good enough.
