Metaverse: where are we headed?
We often utilize different digital platforms on today’s internet since they aid in facilitating physical-world activities. For example, we order items from Amazon and deliver them to our homes. We post images of our recent supper on Instagram, purchase Madison Square Garden concert tickets online, and go with pals.
Digital platforms will play a significant role in digital-world experiences in the metaverse. For example, working, playing video games, purchasing digital things, socializing with friends, and consuming information may be done while immersed in the metaverse utilizing a virtual reality headset. The metaverse is a virtual world in which you may be present with other people in digital areas, according to Facebook’s Zuckerberg.
The metaverse is the internet’s next phase, one in which users are immersed and virtually present. Real-time persistency, economies, communities, digital avatars, and accessibility across many platforms are all elements of the metaverse.
Early prototypes of the metaverse exist today, providing investors with a taste of its immense potential. A successful metaverse in the future, on the other hand, is likely to have a decentralized, open-architecture platform accessible through virtual reality headsets and powered by blockchain technology.
If successful, the concept is predicted to generate billions of dollars in revenue for businesses across various industries, including social media, video games, e-commerce, and blockchain.
At its core, the metaverse is an embodied internet: a social environment where individuals may meet with customized avatars that make them feel more present than a simple video conference. It’s synchronous, so it feels more authentic than today’s feed-based social networking. You’ll meet with people in real-time rather than catching up on what they’ve been up to.
It will also persist, just like the rest of the planet. So you won’t have to start over when you return to a metaverse location. And, just like in real life, it will have a variety of activities that you would wish to do with other people, such as attending concerts and other events, playing games, hanging out, dating, and, yes, working and shopping.
Metaverse features
1. Virtual world:
The most intrinsic part of a metaverse. You might experience 3D images and sound while exploring it on a computer, game console, mobile device, wearable technology, or other. The notion is that you will feel more present in the metaverse and less present in the real world due to this (where your body stubbornly remains).
2. Virtual reality.
For this, you’ll need a virtual reality headset. The goal is to get wholly involved in the virtual environment, making you feel even more present.
3. Social environment.
The metaverse is a social environment. There are other individuals there, all of whom are represented by avatars. Some of these avatars might be bots, virtual agents, or artificial intelligence forms. You may socialize with the other group members or even accomplish stuff together. Given Facebook’s background as a social network, the social component is likely to be key in its metaverse. We’ve observed that supporting social experiences appears to be an essential attribute of successful titles, using video games as an early precursor of the metaverse. Compared to other gamers, users who play in groups with friends spend over three times more time in the game and spend around three times more on in-game stuff.
4. Persistence.
This means you can access the virtual world whenever you want. You may modify it by adding new virtual buildings or other elements, and the updates will be retained the next time you return. You might be able to move in and own a piece of the property. In the same way that social media relies on user-generated material today, the metaverse will rely on your user-generated content — your digital inventions and personal tales. The metaverse is anticipated to be permanent in real-time, with no way to pause it. Even after users have departed logged off, it continues to exist and operate. This characteristic redirects the user’s centricity to the virtual environment itself.
5. Connection to the real world.
In particular metaverse views, virtual objects in the virtual world resemble natural objects in the real world. For example, you might use a virtual drone in the metaverse to control a real-world drone.
6. Multi-device access
Accessing the metaverse from any device, including your phone, PC, tablet, or other devices, is a vital feature. The immersive virtual reality (VR) experience, which employs a head-mounted display to immerse people in a computer-generated environment where they may handle virtual items, is expected to be significant advancements. Traditional displays and gadgets can also be used to access lighter versions of the metaverse.
7. New economy
A fully established metaverse features a working economy where users may earn and spend digital or fiat money. The game platform Roblox and its money, the Robux, are an early example of a metaverse with an online economy. Robux may be spent on experiences and things for the avatar of those who purchase it. Developers and artists may earn Robux by creating engaging experiences and appealing things that customers want to buy, converting their Robux to fiat currencies like the US Dollar.
What will the new gatekeepers look like?
The firms that create the future’s AR and VR headsets are positioned to profit from the metaverse and impose laws on it. But, as Zuckerberg has confessed, one of the reasons Meta is so interested in the metaverse is that the firm lost out on mobile hardware and is now compelled to play by the rules of Google and Apple’s app stores.
What about privacy, security, and mental wellness?
Facebook, YouTube, and other social media platforms have been widely criticized for their handling of false information and privacy concerns and the impact they have on their users’ mental health. These problems do not go away in the metaverse, but they will most likely be resolved differently. Hiring tens of thousands of moderators to prevent hatred and abuse in real-time situations may not be the best method, and geographical data obtained by headsets surveying people’s living rooms create new privacy concerns. Both business insiders and regulators will benefit from paying attention to these challenges.
Who is going to pay for it, and how?
Advertising supports many of today’s consumers’ internet, with a giant foam of subscription income on top. Some of the same models could be applicable in the metaverse. For example, to return to transactional business structures, maybe fueled by decentralized money. The future economic systems for these services will significantly influence the firms competing to develop the metaverse. Still, they may also determine who gets to join these new worlds, from tiny enterprises to ordinary people.
Digital Events
Fortnite became a social hub for players who wanted to virtually attend concerts, view movie trailer premieres, watch movies during the COVID-19 outbreak, and be a video game. In the future, digital events are anticipated to be a key feature inside the metaverse. You may, for example, virtually attend concerts, movies, sports, or e-sports events with your friends while still being able to enjoy the comforts of your own home. Returning to Ariana Grande’s virtual presence at a Fortnite concert, the singer was paid an estimated $20 million for her appearance. The worldwide virtual event business is worth $94 billion, with earnings shared between content developers (such as movie studios, professional sports teams, and artists) and metaverse platforms that host these events.
Future of Metaverse
“The full vision of the Metaverse is decades away. It requires extraordinary technical advancements … and perhaps regulatory involvement too. In addition, it will require overhauls in business policies and changes to consumer behavior. But the term has become so recently popular because we can feel it beginning.” — Hollywood-exec-turned-metaverse-expert Matthew Ball in the foreword to his upcoming book “The Metaverse.”
Immersive hardware will play a significant role in popularising the metaverse, whether it takes one or many decades to build. That’s why the competition to produce AR glasses between Meta, Apple, Snap, Microsoft, and others is critical. Whoever wins it may not necessarily win the metaverse, but they will have a significant home-field advantage.
The establishment of a globally interoperable metaverse is the next phase in the growth of metaverses. In the actual world, getting from one nation to another is as simple as boarding a plane or train. With only an internet connection and a laptop, one should be able to move from one metaverse to another in the omniverse. In this way, the metaverse has the potential to lower entry barriers to a myriad of options that were previously only available to a select few in select areas.
The Metaverse Is a Trillion-Dollar Opportunity
The metaverse is expected to open up a wide range of revenue prospects across numerous industries, particularly for firms that develop virtual platforms and associated components, ultrarealistic graphics semiconductors and processors, and related software.
Hardware: Virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, graphic chips, and omnidirectional treadmills are just a few examples of high-tech hardware that will undoubtedly play a crucial part in creating an interactive and immersive metaverse. The hardware industry might expand from $31 billion in 2021 to $297 billion by 2024. 14 The prospect for VR technology in the metaverse alone might be worth more than $100 billion.
Applications & Wallets: New services will arise when financial transactions shift to the metaverse. Users will need to effortlessly convert between fiat and digital currencies, purchase things with digital currencies, and keep track of their digital transactions. FinTechs, particularly those focusing on blockchain, might be crucial in enabling these transactions and assuring proper ownership. These businesses will most likely charge for transactions, foreign/virtual exchange conversions, and/or custodial services in exchange.
Finally, there’s one major reason why we don’t yet have a metaverse:
The metaverse is a network. It is a collection of loosely linked services, both by corporations establishing dedicated roadways connecting their services and consumers pounding their routes to travel from one location to another. That’s also why some of the early avatar-based services, such as Second Life, aren’t the metaverse in and of themselves. Just as the mobile internet isn’t just one app and none of your phone’s applications would have thrived if it weren’t for other apps and services, the metaverse relies on a slew of linked services thriving.
“Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.” — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, laying out a more ambitious timeline in Meta’s founder’s letter.
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