TECHNOLOGIES
prnewswire | May 23, 2023
WIN Reality, the virtual reality training and assessment platform for athletes, announced today the launch of their latest in-game coaching product, WIN Elite. This new offering is designed to provide direct, personalized coaching and analysis for young baseball and softball players to improve their hitting performance in real-time in an immersive VR environment.
WIN Elite is centered around individualized 1:1 coaching from a core group of coaching professionals who lead hitting lessons with athletes in real time. The combination of coaching with VR provides game speed repetitions with real time metrics. The program includes working through fundamental drills, hitting scenarios, and teaching a winner's mentality, all designed to improve performance at the plate. With Elite, athletes will experience coaching that is normally only accessible to elite athletes and teams. Scheduling is flexible and athletes can join the platform from anywhere with a wifi connection, making WIN Elite a convenient training option for both players and parents.
"There's no substitute for a coach, but not everyone has the time and resources for in person, 1:1 instruction on top of the rigors of school, practice, and games," says Ben Schragger, Director of Customer Experience at WIN Reality. "With WIN Elite, young players can unlock the benefits of a private hitting coach, including custom development plans, from the comfort of their own home."
Beyond the advantages of a VR environment, WIN Elite leverages accountability between the players and the coaches in order to help develop athletes who are just getting started in sports all the way through elite high school players preparing for their transition to college. That means personal training plans with clear expectations of completion coupled with on-demand text messages directly between coaches and players. It also means access to community events periodically that feature Q&As with college athletes, interactive training livestreams with other coaches, and info sessions on college recruiting and other off-the-field topics.
"We launched WIN Reality because we knew that a VR environment can help more players hone their performance," said Chris O'Dowd, Founder and CEO of WIN Reality and former pro baseball player. "But that's no substitute for the value of a personal coach guiding a player's growth in the game. By bringing together the best of technology with the power of individual attention and instruction, we know that our young players can make the most of their growth in the sport."
"Being able to throw the headset on, take swings, and receive instantaneous feedback about how you're performing, you can't rival that", said Chris Love, WIN Elite Parent. "The ability for Winter, my son, to train virtually with his WIN Elite coach, who played high-level baseball, is as good or better than any in person coach Winter has had up until this point."
WIN Reality is hosted on the Meta Quest headset and the platform is available at both winreality.com as well as the Meta Quest store. WIN Elite is $299 for a three-month subscription in addition to the basic pricing for WIN Reality at $29/month. Introductory pricing offers are currently available for new users.
About WIN Reality
WIN Reality's virtual reality -based training tool is used by thousands of youth players and hundreds of professional and collegiate baseball athletes, including most Major League Baseball (MLB) franchises and more than 100 NCAA teams. Delivered through the Meta Quest headset, the company's software solution allows baseball and softball players to step into a virtual ballpark and take game-speed pitches that move as they would in a live environment. With a library of over 7,000 real-life pitchers and nearly two million pitches, users can participate in a near-infinite number of hitting drills and pitching simulations with real-time data-driven insights to improve pitch-recognition abilities and swing attributes.
MLB players who used WIN as a game-prep tool exhibited 19% higher batting averages, 12% higher on-base percentages, and an 18% better plate-discipline ratio, according to a joint WIN-MLB study. Within the last year, players have faced nearly 40 million pitches on the WIN platform.
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MEDIA AND BROADCASTING
LiveOne, Inc. | May 16, 2023
LiveOne an award-winning, creator-first, music, entertainment and technology platform, announced today an exclusive content distribution deal with OTT Studio, a leading streaming technology platform and CTV app publisher. LiveOne will be OTT Studio’s exclusive music streaming provider, delivering LiveOne’s 600 expertly curated radio stations via OTT’s new Music Plus application. The deal will expand the distribution of LiveOne’s premium audio and entertainment content to an additional 47 million CTVs in North America via LG’s webOS and Vizio’s SmartCast platforms.
Patrick Markel, LiveOne’s Senior Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, said, “We’re excited to execute this multi-year agreement with OTT Studio to make LiveOne even more accessible to music lovers by leaning into OTT Studio’s unique ability to reach millions of customers on the most popular streaming TV devices.”
James Patrick, OTT Studio Co-founder, commented, ”The CTV ecosystem is ripe with opportunities for innovative audio-first destinations offered to consumers at no cost. Our advanced CTV technology and audience growth engine combined with LiveOne’s world-class offering will allow us to bring users an unparalleled free live streaming and on-demand music experience on devices that are often the best speaker system in the house.”
The Music Plus app is slated to launch in Q3 2023 on Roku and FireTV, and on LG's webOS, Vizio's SmartCast and other platforms later in the year.
About LiveOne, Inc.
Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, LiveOne, Inc. is an award-winning, creator-first, music, entertainment and technology platform focused on delivering premium experiences and content worldwide through memberships and live and virtual events. The Company's wholly-owned subsidiaries include Slacker Radio, a membership music streaming service, and PodcastOne, which generates more than 2.3 billion downloads per year, 350+ hours distributed weekly, and 14M+ monthly unique listeners. Nearly all new Tesla EVs sold in the U.S. come with a paid membership to LiveOne’s Slacker Radio which is paid by Tesla. As of April 11, 2023, the Company has accrued a paid and free ad-supported membership base of approximately 2.9 million*. The Company was awarded Best Live Moment by Digiday for its “Social Gloves” PPV Event, and has been a finalist for 8 more awards, including Best Live Event, Best Virtual Event, Best Overall Social Media Excellence, and Best Original Programming from Cynopsis
and Digiday. As of February 9, 2023, the Company has streamed over 2,900 artists, has a library of 30 million songs, 600 curated radio stations, over 300 podcasts/vodcasts, hundreds of pay-per-views, personalized merchandise, released music-related NFTs, and created a valuable connection between fans, brands, and bands. The Company's other wholly-owned subsidiaries include PPVOne, Gramophone Media, Palm Beach Records, Custom Personalization Solutions, and LiveXLive, and the Company’s other majority-owned subsidiaries are Drumify and Splitmind.
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VIRTUALIZATION
businesswire | May 29, 2023
Strivr, the leading platform for enterprise-scale Virtual Reality (VR) solutions, announced the evolution of its offering to accelerate content and solution capabilities using Generative AI (GenAI) for enhanced storyline development, animation and asset creation, and optimization of visual and content-driven features. Staying true to its roots in using cognitive science, data science, and artificial intelligence, Strivr will also be using GenAI to intelligently derive unique insights from immersive user data to support HR and L&D leaders in making critical business decisions.
With nearly 60,000 hours of content creation experience, Strivr has driven measurable impact for its enterprise customers through a best-in-class content library in the areas of cost savings, increased sales, and faster onboarding. Along with advancements like the use of GenAI to accelerate the content creation process, Strivr is able to drive further value for customers with advanced capabilities and a broader library of experiences including a critical area of today's enterprise: employee well-being.
“The demand for high-quality, scalable VR experiences that deliver meaningful and impactful results is at an all-time high,” said Derek Belch, founder and CEO at Strivr. “Our customers are among the largest companies in the world, and they are seeing firsthand the impact immersive technology can bring to employee engagement, retention, and performance. They want more, and we’re listening. Along with GenAI to accelerate content creation, we’re also going beyond training and partnering with one of the world’s leading financial institutions to offer immersive meditation to support the mental health of its workforce. This is just the beginning of how VR will continue to impact the employee experience, and we're excited to see our customers embracing it."
“Immersive and generative AI technologies are taking over the corporate learning landscape,” said Josh Bersin, Global Industry Analyst and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company. “Strivr, through its deep experience with immersive and VR implementations in the market, is clearly a leader to watch.”
Expanding the Strivr Content Library
In recognition of Mental Health Month, Strivr is hosting its first in-headset mental health and well-being applications on the platform in partnership with Reulay and Healium. According to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, meditation can help reduce anxiety just as well as drug therapies, while practicing mindfulness has also been shown to help employee productivity, focus and collaboration. Strivr customers can now offer safe mental health “breaks” to their employees as part of their VR-based immersive programs and training curricula, addressing reskilling for emotional well-being to tackle increasing levels of employee burnout, depression, and anxiety.
Building on this newly expanded offering, Strivr also offers customers choice when it comes to sourcing content to build out their VR libraries. Whether it’s Strivr-created content, content developed by Strivr-certified partners, or content developed in-house, Strivr’s open platform enabled by the Strivr Software Development Kit (SDK) allows customers to choose how they want to source content. Similar to Strivr’s Solutions team, content partners have the potential to leverage Strivr’s enterprise-scale platform to impact millions of learners, and the opportunity to make a lasting impact on the global workforce. For content developers interested in Strivr’s assessment and certification process, please visit developer.strivr.com.
Introducing Strivr Home
Enabling learners to navigate their own experiential learning path, Strivr has also introduced Strivr Home, a virtual in-headset performance hub focused exclusively on employee experience. As the central hub to upskill, reskill, and recharge, Strivr Home simplifies, unifies, and personalizes the in-headset experience by transporting users into a tranquil home setting to access world-class immersive content. With features including single sign-on and a central hub where people can browse premium training content, Strivr Home is also designed to guide the user’s journey and will evolve to offer insights on learner performance and recommendations on future experiences.
Strivr Home is available today with the latest release of the company’s in-headset Player product. To experience Strivr Home and new content offerings.
About Strivr
With over 1M learners trained in VR, Strivr is transforming the employee journey through experiential learning. Incubated at Stanford, Strivr’s platform empowers enterprises to build, manage, experience, and measure VR-based learning to optimize workforce performance. With a premium content offering based on nearly 60,000 hours of content creation experience since its inception in 2015, Strivr customers gain unique learning and assessment data to measure training effectiveness and predict learning outcomes at scale. With nearly 2M sessions conducted in VR from hiring to training and upskilling, Strivr is proud to partner with elite sports teams and Fortune 1000 companies to elevate performance through immersive experience.
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