Not only are there large technical problems, but we’re still at the hypothesis stage. When a company is building a metaverse experience, I try to remind its leaders of a few points. Instead, companies should simplify their language to convey what they really mean-let’s build a digital twin, let’s do a video game activation, let’s try NFT ticketing, and so on. S+B: How can businesses reduce the risk of being too early with the metaverse, or too late, or betting on the wrong horse?īALL: For most businesses, I think declaring a metaverse strategy is unnecessary and probably unhelpful. We’re obviously deep into the mobile era, yet I still write on a PC and prefer the form factor for many tasks. The metaverse, and its devices, will complement today’s models. Some think that believing in the metaverse means believing we will replace all the devices and interfaces we use today-that is, we stop using a mobile phone or making a flat video call, and instead wear AR goggles and work inside a 3D boardroom. The latter is just a tiny part of the former, and predominantly leisure-focused. Yet describing the metaverse as a game is like describing the internet as a social network. This is understandable, as a social gaming platform like Roblox has much in common with the metaverse-both are expansive networks of real-time 3D virtual worlds accessible across myriad devices globally and with integrated economies, identity systems, and more. Some imagine the metaverse is just a giant video game. And although web3 and crypto may end up being relevant to the metaverse, this is hotly debated among metaverse leaders today and far from certain. Others conflate the metaverse with web3 or crypto, but those terms refer to the philosophy and potential database structures of a decentralized internet. ![]() These devices may become the best, most popular, or preferred way to access the metaverse. But in the same way the mobile internet is not a smartphone, they are not the metaverse-they are just access methods. In fact, lowered expectations give us more breathing room to unpack its challenges and clarify misconceptions.įor example, some business leaders still think the metaverse is just VR/AR. All of this has taken air out of the metaverse “bubble”-but doesn’t alter its potential. Crypto has crashed, VR hasn’t found product-market fit, and US gaming revenues experienced their first year-over-year decline since the dot-com crash. Meanwhile, it’s hard to point to metaverse products and metaverse revenues. In 2023, metaverse hype is holding up better than you might think-there were more than 750 mentions in Q1-but the focus is now on AI. ![]() And despite Zuckerberg predicting the metaverse was five to ten years away, Facebook’s name change seemed to suggest imminent disruption, which those building the metaverse knew would take longer. Some argued the metaverse was suddenly here-even though executives such as Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang described its development as a multi-decade process that was only just starting to formalize. Often, they wrongly conflated the metaverse with video games, or NFTs, or VR, and so on. This boom both prompted many executives to start using the term before they really understood it-or how it could affect their company, employees, and customers-and reflected the excitement the concept generated. In 2021, there were nearly 300 such uses. In the first 29 years of the term’s existence, it appeared in barely a dozen SEC filings. But let’s start with the big one: that the metaverse is or was overhyped.Ī lot of the issue here isn’t the degree of the hype, but rather its suddenness and how this produced greater confusion and set the wrong expectations. S+B: What’s the biggest misconception business leaders have about the metaverse?īALL: Oh, there are many.
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