Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg almost made the Metaverse a household name… [+] Facebook itself. At present, investments related to the Metaverse are unprofitable. (Photo: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP) (Photo: ANDREW CAballero-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
The Metaverse is a failure. Games are dumb. I tried DecentralandMANA, a token I foolishly own. My avatar is constantly hitting the wall. Even if I paid for premium services, skins or whatever, I can’t imagine it being that much fun. The token has fallen by 81% since the beginning of the year. It’s a miracle they’re still in business. Grayscale’s Decentraland ETF is now being bought for 60 cents by crypto vultures who love it and think it might hit $1 again one day.
In the mid-2000s, I watched Caprica on the SyFy channel. It’s a prequel to the reimagined Battlestar Galactica that takes AI and robotics to a whole new level. In Caprica, teenagers live in virtual worlds wearing glasses that look like what Oculus headsets will look like in 20 years. Only their avatars look more like themselves than some blocky Minecraft character with a stupid mask. It looks attractive, if not scary, and a little dystopian. Our metaverse is nothing like it. It is too early. At the same time, there will be many unsuccessful projects. Right now, everything you can do in the virtual world is easier to do in the real world.
Shades of Gray are investing heavily in crypto-related exchange-traded funds to attract retail investors to the market … [+] Here, their Dencentraland fund has fallen over 80% since the beginning of the year.
About a year after billionaire Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook “Meta Platforms” in the hope that Covid lockdown would teach us all the dystopian sci-fi lifestyle depicted in Caprica, the Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 15. own standards, the metaverse has not yet caught up with its user base. Nobody knows what brought them there.
Zuckerberg warned investors ahead of time that the transition to living in a virtual world would take years, if not generations. Even Generation Y, who grew up on Instagram and TikTok, prefer to be in front of each other rather than in the virtual world. The world of players and the entire gaming experience is still friends playing against each other via broadband access on the PlayStation or Xbox console.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the meta’s flagship product, Horizon Worlds, fell short of expectations. But while most titles are rather lackluster and often only feature hot sexy trailers to lure gamers in early on, there is still a belief that virtual worlds like those depicted in sci-fi will become a reality.
Facebook describes the Metaverse as the successor to the mobile internet. where it is today For today’s investors, owning Metaverse Securities was unprofitable.
Screenshot from the Etro fashion show during Metaverse Fashion Week on March 25, 2022. Someday, … [+] these images will look more realistic and may (or may not) encourage people to buy tickets to a fashion show to perform from afar, minus hotel costs. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
If the future is sci-fi virtual reality, at least to some degree, then the Metaverse investment theme is long-term. Companies come and go, but the concept of the Metaverse remains history for traditional companies like Facebook and those in the cryptocurrency space.
Meta says they hope to connect 1 billion people to various Metaverse platforms, including their own, over the next 10 years.
GartnerIT predicts that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day working, shopping, etc. in the metaverse, and 30% of organizations worldwide will provide products and services in the metaverse.
Such predictions have helped Metaverse projects raise more than $177 billion in investment since the start of 2021.
Popular brands such as Gucci, Coca-ColaKO, Nikeland’s own Nike, are built on the Roblox platform and have begun selling digital assets and offering virtual fittings, auctions, and virtual factory tours.
“Without a doubt, the Metaverse today is a rapidly growing trend and the dream of many for decades,” said Alexei Kulevets, co-founder and CEO of Walken.
There are many reasons to believe that the Metaverse will gain momentum, such as the emergence of some virtual reality games, cheaper virtual reality headsets for immersive experiences, and traceable blockchain technology that enables secure transactions. The younger generation is accustomed to buying items in video game worlds and accustomed to collaborating with other people in those worlds through headsets and consoles.
The hype has far surpassed reality. Bitcoin is crashing right now, so the market looks depressed. Meta’s market capitalization, which was over $900 billion when the company changed its name from Facebook, is now around $344 billion.
Even though over $200 billion has been invested over the years, there really isn’t a Metaverse product that anyone can buy. No Xbox Metaverse console can take you and your friends to a virtual nightclub.
“Mission of Metaverse Inc. is to really immerse a person in a whole new world,” said Jorditz, CEO of MetaMetaverse in Palo Alto, the Metaverse developer platform. “I don’t think bulky VR headsets are ideal, but it’s not surprising that while the software side of immersive experiences is being created and made available to individuals, the hardware is currently facing a barrier that prevents people from fully immersing themselves in these virtual spaces. . .”
Aside from the stunning Hollywood trailers, the graphics on these platforms are no better than the Nintendo of the 1990s, even in the Meta’s Horizon universe. When Meta announced the launch of Horizon Worlds in France and Spain, it was met with widespread ridicule. Some say the technology is “too buggy”.
In the world of cryptocurrency investing, patience can last for six months. Simon Vieira, CEO of Mixmob, said the market has taken some time to mature and looks attractive.
“About 50 years ago, we were just a few pixels moving around in a ping pong ball. Imagine what will happen in the next 50 years with cheaper tools, more talent and faster internet speeds,” Vieira said.
The desktop-based interface can finally solve graphics problems. New technologies such as Unreal Engine’s Pixel Streaming, which allows developers to run complex 3D applications on the web that are streamed and rendered in the cloud, are seen as bringing the Metaverse out of its childish world of blocky characters.
“Ultimately, this means that your computer is just an empty bridge between the virtual world and super-powerful machines elsewhere,” Vieira said. This will create better virtual worlds, a better virtual world, a world that will eventually contain the virtual you as a hologram, the metaverse that most developers are trying to build.
Some people think it’s a good thing that Zuckerberg’s vision of the Metaverse is crumbling. Big technologies already control much of our data and influence our lives. With Meta’s Horizon Worlds, Zuckerberg is trying to create a proprietary version of the Internet, similar to his Internet.org initiative, in which he controls everything consumers can and can’t access. This is a concern given Facebook’s reputation for user privacy.
“There is growing concern about the potential for espionage and user data harvesting on the Metaverse platforms, which seems inevitable,” Kulevets said, but that doesn’t stop him from being optimistic about Metaverse.
The Meta Oculus Quest 2 headset has outsold Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and S and is catching up with the PlayStation 5. This milestone makes Meta’s top VR headset the most successful VR product ever, with headset sales up 97% since 2021. Everyone is aware of the issues of privacy and data collection, but they are not overly concerned and do not understand why this is being done.
“In practice, user behavior shows that a good product outweighs privacy concerns,” says Julia Schwartz, chief strategy officer for Everyrealm Inc, a New York-based virtual real estate investor and developer of real estate metaverse projects.
Even though Meta Platforms has lost half of its market capitalization since the name change and is focused on becoming a powerful engine in virtual worlds, there is still a consensus that Metaverse will one day be a multi-trillion dollar industry. Meanwhile, all participants are growing.
For those who are patient, JPMorgan analysts have estimated that around $54 billion is spent on virtual goods each year, and McKinsey & Company says the metaverse could generate up to $5 trillion by 2030.
“With its user base and capital firepower, Facebook has a huge advantage in being an industry leader,” Schwartz said. “Zuckerberg was ahead of his time in recognizing the possibilities of the metaverse, and now others are trying to catch up.”
There is still a lot of work to get users interested. Investors can cut their losses and only buy back those tokens that have fallen 50% or more this year.
“We are social animals. The metaverses need to solve this problem first. Will the game Horizon Worlds or the anonymous decentralized metaverse win? We don’t know that today, but we do know that they both drive the entire virtual world. A welcome progress. It was definitely the most exciting a moment to watch and be a part of,” Kulevets said.
Post time: Apr-21-2023