Let’s continue the exploration of Web 3.0, promised by some as the future of the Internet, economy and experience, and by others as an energy-consuming nightmare, even an alternative version of the scenario of the book “1984 “. The future is certainly somewhere in between, and savvy analysts agree it will be a long one, giving us time to prepare for it.
In this new school year, you could not have missed in your mailbox, an invitation or a request for a conference or a seminar, sometimes paying, on the Metavers. It is one of the most prominent Web 3.0 applications. Serious consulting firms, in particular McKinsey, BCG, Gartner, Accenture Where Deloittehave also published white papers, or trends, to give their vision and convince their customers to think about it… with them 😉
GreenSI consulted and compiled them this summer, to give you here some of their convergences, because there are also quite a few differences, on a subject as broad as the future of Web technologies.
The first lesson from these studies is certainly the fact that everyone agrees on one point: this is nothing new!
Web 3 technologies have been around for more than ten years and have already developed markets for hardware, software and services. The Metaverse market is seen as the revamping of those augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), virtual assets (NFT) and virtual worlds markets that already exist. The advantage of such an approach is that it makes it possible not to start from scratch and put figures, where today there is only a battle of concept and investments. (see Web3: quits or doubles?) and an offer in the making.
This therefore makes it possible to compile current figures for the virtual or augmented reality market, for example, and attribute them to the fledgling Metaverse market. But when we add those of cryptocurrencies, we are on the verge of bad faith, because yes there will be a currency in the Metaverse, but Bitcoin has developed without any need for a virtual universe so far.
For instance, Gray Investments estimates the market for virtual worlds at $400 billion in 2025, but it starts from the figure of $180 billion in 2020, i.e. almost half already by aggregating the video game market (opposite).
So pay attention to the sleight of hand, because it is the combination of these technologies that will deliver a new marketand the current figures are those of its constituents, without any guarantee that the transformation of their combination will operate.
Note also that the video game market, which grew by 20% during the confinements (black curve), is wisely returning to negative growth by 2025 and is seeking a second wind. So he clearly has a goal in common with the Metavers.
To caricature, it’s a bit like trying to convince ourselves of the potential of the flying car market by looking at the vitality of the automobile market and that of the aviation market. Likewise, if young people like to play online and teenagers like to communicate and socialize (these are different markets), it is not clear that young people + teenagers all adopt the same world, allowing both to be in online and socialize.
We are clearly uncertain about the uses and the speed at which they will develop before reaching a critical mass that will have combined these two technologies.
When we take a closer look at Grayscale’s announced figures for the Metavers, their growth is 17.5% per year. It’s not nothing!
For Verified Market Research, it is even an announced growth of 39% per year until 2030.
Such growth corresponds to an already well-established transformation process, for example the growth of the Internet between 2005 and 2010, which rose from 1 to 2 billion Internet users worldwide (after being more slowly adopted between 1995 and 2005 ).
GreenSI remains very skeptical and gives you an appointment in 6 months, to see if we already have half of this growth, i.e. 8% to 20% more users…
The combination of Metaverse technology markets is therefore that of the video game, virtual and augmented reality, virtual worlds and virtual assets markets.
The mature video game market, is already immersive with virtual reality headsets and massively collaborative with e-sport (where an audience follows the performance of players online or in a room). It is today the core market of the target of Meta (ex. Facebook) with the purchase of headsets Oculus. In ambush the major console players also have their vision: Microsoft, nintendo and sony.
The number of augmented reality headsets sold over the past 5 years is around 30 million, or less than 1% of Internet users, with growth far from 40%. Apple is seen as a spur that can boost the growth of Internet users’ equipment, a bit like the iPhone redistributed the cards in telephony, photography and music. But Apple did not announce during its keynote last week, as many “meta-enthusiasts” expected, the timetable for the release of its future headphones (Apple Reality Pro trademark registered). So for now, we will have to wait until 2023 for the “Apple sting” and imagine the possibility of a more massive start to adoption from 2024.
The market for immersive and collaborative events will also growespecially around concerts and sports at home.
In the first case, online concert experiences where participants have a virtual reality headset and join a space where the artist performs, have already been successfully organized in fortniteone of these collaborative video games, renamed virtual world.
The test of virtual artists in a room full of real fans was also done recently with the tour of the group ABBA which, with artists over 70 years old, preferred to give their performance via holographic avatars rather than on stage; -)
In the second case, Méta bought the company in 2021 Supernatural. It offers sports coaches and online music to reinvent the experience of sports at home with an immersive headset. The uses of home sport have developed with the latest confinements, in particular via video, but what is the potential of immersive in this market?
The society Platoon, which sells connected bicycles, also promised a bright future last year, is now scaring away investors and was withdrawn from the coast for a while in 2022. It has changed its strategy and is playing its survival on the sale of its bicycles by Amazon. An actor who sees it as a fine prey, after buying connected locks or robot vacuum cleaners, to complete his Alexa range of home equipment.
Note that in these two cases, the physical model exists, and is completed by its virtual model. Promising uses will certainly come from the hybridization of the physical and the virtual.
The augmented reality market, which unlike the other two, is already well developed in the world of industrial companies and even in the public service. Glasses are less immersive than a helmet, the equipment can also be a vehicle windshield or any surface that can enrich the real world with digital information.
An evolution of this market is to do the opposite, i.e. to project reality onto the virtual, and therefore to increase the virtual and not the reality. Helmets could therefore evolve with external cameras so that the person wearing them can also see around them. The fact of being isolated from the real world with a helmet is today a factor limiting use in time (nausea) and in space (mobility).
Finally, in emerging markets, we also find that of art and digital objects, but which require a persistent virtual world to exist. Otherwise it’s like a web in your bank vault. These markets are the reason why luxury brands or auctioneers are on the go to prepare for the opening of these virtual worlds. But for this post, we will leave aside the uses around blockchain technologies and NFTs, swept up in the turmoil of the fall of bitcoin in recent months.
The Metaverse therefore raises the question of the interaction between the real world and the physical world. And to answer this question, our brain also has a say!
And the studies that start from the hypothesis of a helmet, do not answer it.
Do you necessarily need a virtual reality headset to be immersed in a new world?
Regular readers will tell you that all it takes is a good book, but this world remains private.
Large screens, where the objects or characters are at scale 1, also allow this, as well as collaboration. The first immersive video rooms existed 10 years ago with the illusion of a conference room that continued on a video wall. When you play tennis with a WiiU on the big screen, the illusion of playing can be very strong, and the collaboration little developed by Nintendo would allow you to have another real player in front of you.
Simulators at fairs also use 2D screens to project 3D to which your brain reacts with strong emotions.
Finally when we explain that 3D acts on the brain and makes it possible to treat phobias for example, it is also true for 2D for a long time and it has been used for treatments.
Our brain is therefore ultimately a very powerful processor, which we can make believe a lot of things.
The idea of a 3D metaverse on a screen and not with a helmet already exists. Is she totally goofy? Doesn’t the evolution of the existing have as much future as a whole new universe?
In any case, in the short term, this hypothesis seems closer to being able to support a deployment of uses between 20% and 40% per year, than that of equipping Internet users, at the same speed, with virtual reality headsets.
The next post will therefore explore the potential of these collaborative 3D virtual worlds, but on a simple screen, the Internet user’s brain processor taking care of making it immersive.
So should we rush into these seminars and other back-to-school training, otherwise we will miss the boat and fall behind competitors from 2023, by not undertaking major projects?
For GreenSI, there is no urgency, beyond riding the buzz before it dies down.
As long as the critical mass has not reached, let’s say 5% in a country, the uses will concern only “early adopters” and not the core target of the future market. Let’s not forget that, by country, Internet speeds are far from being homogeneous in the world, and few countries allow Metavers, France being one of the good students.
There is therefore no urgency, and this is also what this poll of Jeremy Owyang with its Twitter network, made up of people who are very committed to the theme of digital transformation.
In contrast GreenSI thinks that the subject of the Metaverse is a good subject to think about right now about its digital transformation, because it pushes it further in terms of customer experience.
For example, if you are a furniture distributor, before imagining selling unique virtual furniture (NFT) to all these new worlds, which according to what you have just seen will not happen before 5-10 years, you can for example already equip the showrooms of its stores to immerse the customer in his apartment (he comes with his photos) and that he can try on the physical furniture of the store. New virtual experience, but in “experience bubbles” that will help generate adoption.
The Metaverse as a virtual universe will therefore certainly emerge, but it does not seem to be for now and perhaps not in the technological form imagined by Meta.