Despite the high cost of developing the concept of “Metaverse” which is supposed to revolutionize the use of the internet, the most enthusiastic companies are still betting on it.
Joel Hazan, a partner at the Boston Consulting Group, says the reason Metaverse users are so few, is “bad products”.
In addition, Joel conducted a study in 6 Western countries and found that 52% of the respondents are aware of the concept of the metaverse, while only 16% of them have used one of these virtual worlds (46% are between 18 and 24 years old).
However, the experiments that succeeded were those that preceded the emergence of the concept of Metaverse, namely games like “Roblox”, “Minecraft”, the famous “Fortnite” and the virtual world of “VR Chat”.
On the other hand, the number of users of the most recent platforms such as “The Sandbox” and “Decentraland”, which rely on cryptocurrencies for financing and want to encourage users to exchange digital goods, does not exceed a few thousand-internet users who are willing to spend their money on these platforms.
“I’m not worried,” said Stefan Borghi, co-founder of Sandbox, in an interview with AFP on the sidelines of the Web Summit in Lisbon, noting that the number of daily users of the platform reached between 30 and 40 thousand during the summer.
He stressed that “people are showing interest in Metaverse,” noting that companies continue to invest in this world, while the number of studios that produce content in it is currently 230 studios.
However, even Meta, which invested more than ten billion dollars to develop its Horizon Worlds platform, had to reconsider its ambitions in this field.
“A large number of us don’t spend much time at Horizon,” Vishal Shah, vice president of metaverse affairs at Meta, wrote in a mid-September memo to employees and published by The Verge website.
A major gamble
He spoke about indifferent comments about this platform, asking, “If we do not like (the platform), how can we expect our users to like it?”
Of the 10,000 “worlds” that the platform contains, only 9% are used by more than 50 people per month, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Meta President Mark Zuckerberg asked whether it was possible to increase the number of users of the platform by sharing profits with content creators and adding legs to avatars.
“The success of this procedure depends on the opinion of the companies that developed the Kest helmet, so they should consider it amazing and therefore want to develop applications for it, However, this dynamic never happens”, explained Joel Hazan.
Those who promote Metaverse and do not consider abandoning this world are trying to find technical solutions to accommodate the increasing number of users.
About a decade ago, the British company, “Improbable” has been developing a system that allows up to “20,000 users around the world to interact directly through their voices” within the same virtual space.
This development allows music stars, famous athletes or brands to enhance their presence with their fans, says Improbable Director Hermann Narola during his intervention at the Web Summit.
This year, Improbable partnered with Yoga Labs, a specialist in NFT (non-fungible tokens), which acquires Board Ips Yacht Club Group, on which it would like to base the development of the video game “Othercide”.
A preliminary test conducted in July, without the adoption of virtual reality, allowed about 4,500 users to play the game at the same time, but the launch date of the game has not yet been determined.
During the web conference, Meta Director of Applications, Naomi Gallett, said that Metaverse involves “a major gamble and risk is important for innovation.”
“Many companies are developing in this field that will succeed with or without Meta”, she concluded.
References: AFP
