Today, the metaverse is trying to recreate a lot of what we already do on the regular internet. Eventually the internet enabled new innovations, from Zoom calls to your iPhone. Right now several companies are working on it, with no one holding a clear advantage.ĭonato also made the comparison to the early days of the internet, when websites largely copied real-world services like the yellow pages. Even Meta's top executives have said it could take up to 15 years to build out their ultimate vision. The metaverse today is like social media in the early 2000s, or about a decade before boomers started signing up for Facebook.
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He pointed to new technologies that enable better social interactions in the metaverse, like spatial audio (where your headphones make it sound like someone's voice is coming from their direction in a virtual world) and software that can read and mimic facial expressions. "But I don't think that's gating the adoption of the metaverse." "It's absolutely going to get better over time," Donato said, in discussing VR hardware. Instead, Donato is focusing on the social aspect of the Roblox metaverse as a way to get more people to try it. He said phones and computer screens already create enough of a feeling for presence. The physical encapsulation is a critical piece for Zuckerberg and his $10 billion metaverse commitment.ĭonato, however, doesn't see new futuristic hardware as the centerpiece of a successful metaverse experience. It's a different story on hardware, especially for Meta and its Oculus virtual reality headsets.
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Yet despite over $3 trillion in combined market cap, Meta and Microsoft are behind smaller players when it comes to building a full virtual world. Microsoft had its own take on metaverse meetings with a similar product called Mesh, which integrates with its Teams chat app. Its first official metaverse product, announced earlier this year, was a virtual reality program that lets you hold live meetings with cartoon avatars of your friends or colleagues. Meta had the same instincts as Roblox during the pandemic and started thinking about the future of work inside the metaverse. Some participants even make a living inside these metaverses by selling their digital wares. Both have already built virtual worlds, where millions of people socialize, play and take part in a digital economy. Online gaming companies Roblox and Epic Games top the list. It also birthed a market for a bunch of copycats, wannabes and executives, who clearly missed the trend and are now scrambling to capitalize on all things related to the metaverse.Īmid the noise, there are several companies with legitimate promise in the metaverse, and they're not today's dominant Big Tech names. Some of the smartest people in the world came out this year to say the next big thing was here, and it's the metaverse. This was the year we paid attention to the metaverse, which in a few short months went from a wonky sci-fi term coined decades ago to a mainstream concept that has tech investors unloading cash and futurists drooling over the prospect of fiction becoming reality. (Oh, and his company has a new name too: Meta.)
When Mark Zuckerberg says he's going to spend $10 billion to create a new kind of virtual reality internet, you pay attention.
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