The Metaverse is already racing!

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End of October 2021, Facebook launched the buzz around the “Metaverse” (Metavers in French, for meta-universe), and GreenSI positioned it as a new branch of the Internet.

But while Facebook is recruiting with a vengeance to decline in the real world its announcement to create 10,000 jobs, the announcements of future competitors follow one another, until (almost) eclipsing Meta. Ultimately we are beginning to glimpse a multitude of Metavers, and not a universe unified by its standards as the Internet has been built. Every day new buds are discovered on this branch of the Internet, which some already call the Web3.
Let’s try to explore them in this post.

Facebook’s recruitment ads from “Game Designer – Metaverse“, for his “Horizons” team, promise contestants to build a social platform of user-generated content where people have freedom of identity and expression and can experience living virtual worlds that could not exist in the real world. This platform is on a global scale. You will be able to develop your “place” and grow your communities there, who will connect to it and can play in all kinds of ways.

The fundamentals of Meta are therefore a social platform to gradually convert one’s current asset of almost 3 billion active users (40 million in France) and an evolution of uses towards the games of its Oculus division, based for the moment on augmented reality helmets.

Recruitment needs are such that the “Wall Street Journal” noted, at the beginning of January, the beginning ofvirtual reality talent war and already counted a hundred employees of Microsoft virtual reality specialists who left their group (although at the peak of its stock market form), a good half of whom would have joined the ranks of Meta. Transfer salaries are of course on the rise.

Let’s also prepare ourselves in business, for a shortage of talent for our augmented reality projects which require very similar profiles…

On his side Microsoft hit hard this week by completing the acquisition of the game publisher, Activision Blizzard, at $95 per share, when it was worth $65 the day before. Microsoft does not have a social network for Ms. Michu, while it already has a strike force in video games. It is therefore $97 billion that it mobilizes to develop its video game branch which for the moment is based on the X box and gaming PCs.

The premium, 45% on the share price, gives an order of magnitude of the valuation estimated by Microsoft between a Metaverse and a gaming platform. A difference that is based on assumptions of advertising revenue and many more purchases by players, via Stores of objects and personalization, which will be a cornerstone of the universes.

Note also that following the announcement of the Metaverse by Facebook, Microsoft was one of the first to support the idea and plan professional meetings there. We see that two months later the financial means are mobilized primarily on video games and not on Office. This is certainly a weak signal that this market is indeed a B2C market in the first instance. and not B2B.

On the side ofApple, the king of the “lucrative application store”, it is rumored the release of an augmented reality helmet for this year, and inevitably a new universe of applications to go with it. However, Apple will have to find its way, taking advantage of its strong point: knowing how to deploy electronic devices packed with sensors and intelligence connected to a software platform worldwide.

Apple Pay is also an interesting asset, because, in the Metaverse, everyone will have to buy their objects. The means of payment around cryptos and non-fungible tokens (NFT) to manage property, are sharpening their weapons, and see it as a use case on a global scale. But Apple has neither social network nor video games, on the scale of the stakes of the Metaverse… even if Apple earns 30% commission on all games sold via the Apple Store. This is certainly a good part of the 38% gross margin posted each year.

In these actors, walmart, the largest US retailer with physical stores, amended its brand registration in late December to offer virtual goods paid for with cryptocurrency to future customers. But let’s not forget that Walmart also partnered with Oracle in 2020 to acquire TikTok, when the US government no longer wanted a totally Chinese dependency for this platform used by more than 50 million Americans. And then, TikTok was the first social platform in 2021, ahead of Facebook. Walmart’s assets to monetize TikTok, an already video and real-time universe, then move to a virtual universe, are therefore quite credible.

Back to the game business. Who’s even bigger than Activision Blizzard after adding Microsoft Game?

The answer is Chinese Tencent (Epic games, Roblox, …), also the first game platform in China, and Japanese sony (PlayStation), also known for its electronic equipment and its catalog of films. The battle could thus quickly leave the United States and become global, as the takeover of Black Shark by Tencent this week. Black Shark is a Chinese competitor to Oculus. As with Microsoft, acquisition is the fastest way to develop an augmented and virtual reality skill. With a little flair, we can position ourselves on the stock market for the next…

But headphones aren’t the only approach, as shown niantic, the creator of PokemonGO, with its investment of $300 million to develop what they call the “Real World Metaverse”. With your smartphone, through augmented and no longer virtual reality, you can access an entire virtual universe and play with this universe, as with their successful game which allows you to catch Pokémon, collect them, and organize virtual tournaments with other players.

On Sony’s side, the strategy is a partnership with Metahero who masters both the scanning of a person to create his avatar and a crypto that will allow him to dress, once he arrives naked in the Metaverse, like the entrance of Arnold Schwarzenegger, arriving from the future, in Terminator 1 😉

In summary, the magic equation of the Metaverse seems to be for the moment, B2C, the mastery of a VR Headset / Console, immersive games, a social network, a crypto currency, and NFT property rights.

All Tech players who master one end of the equation seek to develop by alliance or acquisition over the others. The playing field is already occupied by Meta, Microsoft, Walmart, Sony, Tencent or Niantic, but will certainly expand further. And then let’s not forget the “pickaxe sellers” who will make it possible to develop these platforms, such as Nvidia, Unity or Cloud vendors who will be able to offer configurations adapted to individuals.

Besides, it didn’t escape you that we didn’t talk about google Where Amazon?

However, they each have significant assets in Cloud computing power that these universes will need, and for Amazon issues as strong as Walmart in the e-commerce of virtual products. As of now, they haven’t made any major announcements, but let’s stay tuned.

Without a doubt, the Metaverse will have sparked a new technological race., to create before anyone else, this virtual universe with an immersive user experience, but above all to bring as many customers as possible. Because someone will have to pay for this construction in the end, and the investors of the moment would like it to be you!



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