Magic Leap is giving away serious cash to developers this year through their Independent Creator Program, which has earmarked an “eight-figure” number destined to fund app developers working in gaming, entertainment, collaboration, productivity, and more. Now, the company has released a list of its first round of recipients which was whittled down from over 6,500 applicants.
Magic Leap says in their blogpost the list below isn’t comprehensive, as some grant recipients are still in stealth mode and will announce themselves and their projects at a later date.
Without further ado, here’s a few of the first round of grant recipients:
Education |
Gaming |
Productivity |
| ANIMA RES | Funktronic Labs | BadVR, Inc |
| Giant Army | Metanaut | |
| Kubold | Monocle Society | Taqtile, Inc |
| Medicalholodeck | ONTOP | |
| Nexus Studios | Overlay | |
| PRELOADED | ||
Entertainment |
Retail & Commerce |
Creator Tools |
| Aesthetic Interactive | Obsess | Alientrap |
| Felix & Paul Studios | roOomy | MINSAR |
| Within | ||
Collaboration |
Architecture & Construction |
Data Visualization |
| Immersiv | VIMAEC | |
| Spatial | ||
Workplace Training |
Documentary |
Health & Wellness |
| Edge Lab | Atlas V | Magic Lines |
– – — – –
Many of the studios above are well-established in both the consumer VR space and the growing AR industry as well, so you may recognize more than a few names on the list.
Gaming
Funkatronic Labs produced the popular VR real-time strategy game Cosmic Trip (2017) as well as the undeniably cute (and difficult) VR game Starbear: Taxi (2018).
Resolution Games is most recently known for developing both Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs (2019) for VR headsets and the Magic Leap One title Angry Birds FPS: First Person Slingshot (2018).
Metanaut, the studio behind the very Rube Goldbergian VR puzzle game Gadgeteer (2019), have just announced their bringing the game to Magic Leap One.
Entertainment
The prolific VR film studio Felix & Paul also got in. It should be an interesting change for the company, as so far they’ve mostly focused on creating stereoscopic 360 films, among which were the recent Sundance 2019 entrants Traveling While Black and Marshal from Detroit, as well as the 2017 Daytime Emmy Award-winning 360 documentary The People’s House: Inside the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama to name a few.
Within, the studio behind the eponymous multi-platform VR experience hub, plays host to a number of high-profile pieces from partners such as Apple, The New York Times, NBC, Vice Media, the United Nations, musical acts like U2, Annapurna Pictures, and more. They’ve also done work in kid-focused AR smartphone app Wonderscope, although we suspect the company has only gotten their feet wet now that they’re officially building AR content for Magic Leap One.
Enterprise
Enterprise-focused creators Spatial, the company which was prominently featured in Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 reveal, is also making a cross-platform version for Magic Leap One, Road to VR learned this week at Mobile World Congress 2019.
While this only highlights a few grantees, it’s clear Magic Leap is tapping high-quality content and tool creators to fill out its burgeoning ‘Magic Leap World’ app store, which at this point is fairly sparse. What’s also fairly apparent is the company’s continued focus on gaming and entertainment still portends a consumer-focused Magic Leap AR headset yet to come.
To boot, the company also announced they’re awarding nearly 200 additional applicants with Magic Leap One headsets, which at $2,300 bucks a pop will make a welcome gift to studios that couldn’t otherwise justify the cost.