Sandbox VR surpasses $200M in lifetime sales with 150 more locations in the pipeline

Sandbox VR said it has surpassed $200 million in lifetime sales for its location-based virtual reality entertainment venues.

The milestone comes after a solid 2024, during which Sandbox VR generated $75 million in sales and had more than 1.4 million players across its locations. In March 2025 alone, the company’s locations drew more than 150,000 players, and the company expects monthly players to grow in tandem with store openings, said 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,” said 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 played a number of experiences at Sandbox VR over the years, including Deadwood Valley, a zombie team shooter game — which I played at the recent Game Developers Conference at the San Francisco location for Sandbox VR. That experience uses multiple sensors strapped to your body for a more visceral experience. It also uses HTC’s most recent VR headset, which is made for location-based VR with features like easy cleaning.

Accelerating growth through franchise expansion

Since the beginning of 2024, Sandbox VR has sold 83 franchise units in partnership with 21 operators, bringing the total to nearly 150 stores in development with 34 operators today. This represents a sixfold increase in deal signings over the past 12 months. This year, the company expects to increase its total footprint by over 50% with the opening of 29 new locations.

The 60th global Sandbox VR location—opened with franchise partners LOL Entertainment—opens in Philadelphia this month. The company finalized a partnership with JLG Ventures in March to open Sandbox VR locations 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.” said Aylang Lou, senior vice president of stores at Sandbox VR, in a statement. “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 more launches per year, Sandbox VR can also work with more partners like Netflix, he said.

“As we get big enough, there could be a day where we can actually open it up and start doing publishing,” Zhao said. “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 locations, Sandbox VR doesn’t have to outlay as much in capital expenditures and can instead use more of its capital for game development.

“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 said.

Consumer engagement driving revenue

Consumer enthusiasm for Sandbox VR’s offerings continues to grow. An average of 117,000 players experienced the company’s immersive adventures each month in 2024, and in 2025, the company is projecting an average of 150,000 monthly players across global locations. This consistent engagement demonstrates the strong appeal of Sandbox VR’s unique offering.

Sandbox VR is creating the future of entertainment by building the world’s most immersive experiences using bleeding-edge virtual reality technology. The company’s patented motion-tracking technology, which captures the movements of a player’s entire body, combines with a high-quality haptic system to provide players with realism and complete immersion that’s not possible with home VR or other location-based VR platforms.

Sandbox VR’s platform combines advanced technology with highly-intuitive functionality. Guests’ own bodies act as their game controllers; all they have to do is step into the virtual world and participate in the action unfolding all around them.

All Sandbox VR experiences are developed by in-house triple-A gaming studios in Hong Kong and Vancouver, led by game industry veterans and are specifically designed for groups to play as social experiences. Teams of up to six freely roam and explore virtual worlds together, while relying on each other to succeed.

Zhao said Gen Z players and Millennials alike are among the best customers, with good growth across the U.S. and Europe, especially the United Kingdom and Germany. More and more of the guests coming to Sandbox VR are under the age of 25. It’s now about 40% of the audience, Zhao said.

Previously, Sandbox VR was bringing on perhaps one franchise operator every quarter, but starting from Q3 of 2024, the company started 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 said.

Generally speaking, it takes about nine months to bring up the first location once the contract is signed. But after that, operators can bring up locations more quickly.

On the corporate level, Sandbox VR has about 130 employees; that number doesn’t include the jobs at franchises or internally owned locations.

Zhao said the company is now exploring moving beyond games. It is working on a cultural learning experience and will share more about that later.

The company also continues to make the march toward full-body VR experiences, and as it does so, Zhao believes that it will get bigger and bigger audiences. A better experience will bring out more people of all ages.

The growth is anomalous in some ways. At the recent Game Developers Conference, a lot of developers told Zhao that VR has been struggling lately. It’s hard for VR developers making games for the home. But Zhao believes that his company can scale more organically as it increases its number of stores.

“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 said.