This is not any typical retail space. With Formula 1 simulators, a giant one-armed bandit housed within a specially themed Vegas Zone, a secret Club48 VIP room reminiscent of a speakeasy, a customization studio, and the star attraction: the Puma Interactive Arcade. From the 1st floor to 3rd, the space redefines what it means to engage with a brand.
A Legacy of Innovation: Puma x Recursive
Puma, in its relentless pursuit of pushing sports and culture forward with technology, began a partnership with AV innovator Recursive in 2018. The collaboration first took shape at Puma’s New York flagship store with immersive experiences like the Skill Cube, where customers trained alongside the pros such as Lewis Hamilton and Romelu Lukaku. This was later followed by a new concept delivered in 2024: The Puma Arcade.
As a concept, the Puma Arcade looked to recreate New York through the lens of Puma in a virtual world, enabling customer to play unique games set across different points in the city, stepping into a life-size arcade space fully equipped with a real time unique tracking system to drive the experience from a player’s physical movements.
The results spoke volumes: engagement quadrupled between the two builds, proving that immersive, tech-forward storytelling resonated with visitors. So, when Puma set sights on Las Vegas, the mandate was clear: go bigger, go bolder.
Tech-First, Athlete-Fueled Imagination
With creative freedom and experience in hand, Recursive began designing all physical and digital elements for the Vegas space from scratch to create a fully immersive sports-meets-gaming experience. The team prototyped and tested innovative tools for many months offsite in their UK studio to ensure the flawless performance that was demanded from such a public facing space.
The result? A jaw-dropping multi-room experience that fuses the thrill of sports with the glitz of Vegas.
Dylan and The Anteroom
The experience kicks off in The Anteroom, a dynamic pre-experience space with custom lighting, dynamic projection, 3 bespoke arcade machines for customer login, and co-op gameplay opportunities.
Dylan, Puma’s gender-neutral brand ambassador, peers from behind virtual blinds behind the three doors opposite the arcade machines to snap player pictures and display them across dynamic video walls. Dylan also playfully reacts to arcade machine players, reflecting the game choices by miming associated movements: a header for soccer or golf swing for golf reflected for the customer in a mirror above their machine. Once a game is selected, Dylan closes the blinds and leaves his virtual space, leaving pawprints across The Anteroom to guide the player to the Main Arcade for game time.
Inside the Main Arcade, the player becomes Dylan, running, swinging, and kicking their way through a fantastical Las Vegas landscape peppered with Puma, sports, and Las Vegas Easter eggs. At the heart of the Main Arcade: ultra-thin bezel video walls, three retro-modern arcade machines, and BenQ LU960ST2 projectors delivering vibrant projection and seamless edge blending. Powered in real-time by custom TouchDesigner and UNREAL engine development, every moment in the arcade is generated on the fly, making it the first real-time interactive experience in retail of this kind.
The magic does not stop with the player. Friends and family can follow along from the arcade machines, watching live gameplay and influencing it in real time. bringing a co-op vibe that keeps everyone in the action.
BenQ: The MVP Behind the Visuals
Three BenQ LU960ST2 projectors are integrated within the Puma Arcade experience, one in The Anteroom and two in immersive Main Arcade. Driving the dynamic and real-time floor projection in both spaces, the projection is based on real time generation of content based on the players movements and interactions within the space.
“We did not have a single issue in integrating the BenQ projectors and also have had zero problems in the 6 months that the BenQ projectors have been up-and-running,” said Kurt Maddox, VP Americas, Recursive. “The alignment, the brightness, the color, under heavy usage conditions, are as good as they were during installation. It is no surprise that we are seeing BenQ as the technology of choice for golf simulators and experiences, and now other immersive AV experiences as well.”
In The Anteroom, this takes the form of a dynamic grid which ripples and stretches as players move through the space. When a game is selected, it also shows the footprints of the Virtual Dylan leaving from behind the false doors, leading you into the Main Arcade. The color of the footprints is reflective of the colorway of the game selected: green for Drive, blue for Goal and red for Run.
Within the Main Arcade, the floor projection picks up the pawprints, this time attached to the player as they enter the space, continuing to follow them around the room as they move, leaving a fading trial behind them, as they take on Dylan as a character. The floor projection also shows a constantly changing array of interactive elements that the player engages with as they play the game, alongside prompts and messaging to guide the player into the lanes of the Las Vegas strip or the power swing of a golf club.
Edge-blending the two projectors in the Main Arcade, the Recursive team achieved incredible brightness while ensuring the player’s body and movement could not block the tracking of their moves. This is essential in an overhead projection environment, where shadows of the player could easily cause the content on the floor to be obscured by the shadow cast within the light path.
“When trialing technology, we immediately identified the BenQ LU960ST2 projectors as unique, with a short throw, super compact size, strong brightness levels, and seamless edge blending,” said David Yates, CEO, Recursive. “Add on the ability to adjust the image 180-degrees and mount in unique spaces, and we realized there were simply no other products on the market that could accomplish what we were looking to do. We could not have built the space with any other projector.”
A Winning Streak in Retail Experience
Since opening its doors in late November, the Puma Arcade and the wider store experiences has received rave reviews from customers and influencers alike with the Puma Arcade alone passing 2,000 plays instore during its first three months of operation: double that of the original NYC experience and showcasing the significant impact creativity coupled with technology can have.
