Anyone who pays attention to the Metaverse knows that 2021 is called the first year of the Metaverse, and Roblox, the first stock in the Metaverse, has been listed for almost a year. Its listing is regarded as the starting point of detonating the concept of metaverse. For a time, industry leaders and capital entered the game one after another. The foreign technology company Facebook even changed its name to Meta (that is, the prefix of Metaverse Metaverse), which even brought the popularity of Metaverse to the highest point.
However, in 2020, some people are happy and some are worried about the news about the metaverse.
In February of this year, Facebook announced its first financial report and new quarterly outlook after changing its name. Due to factors such as slow growth in user growth and operating income that did not meet expectations, Facebook’s stock price plummeted 26%. Its company's department that focuses on the metaverse and specializes in VR/AR technology and products has an operating loss of up to 10.193 billion US dollars. Facebook has become a typical case of huge losses in the metaverse.
Also in February, Roblox, which is loved by everyone, also has a tendency to fall from the altar. It announced its financial report for the fourth quarter of 2021. The losses continued to expand, and the growth rate of users was lower than expected. On the day the financial report was announced, its stock price plummeted 26.51%.
Just when everyone was hopeless about the Metaverse, some new actions of Internet giants at home and abroad further prompted some people to have great confidence in the future of the Metaverse . For example, just in January of this year, Microsoft issued a statement that it would acquire the game developer Activision Blizzard in the form of an "all-cash transaction" of US$68.7 billion. After the acquisition is completed, Microsoft will become the third largest game company in the world by revenue. , second only to Tencent and Sony. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that this will be a step for Microsoft to move into the metaverse.
In February, it was even revealed that Tencent is about to launch a new business XR (Extended Reality, that is, extended reality), and has now started recruiting internally, that is, internal cross-department transfers, starting from hardware equipment, and continuing to deploy the metaverse.
Of course, not only these giants, but also many technology companies have begun to enter the metaverse. However, people in the circle said that the metaverse is still in an early stage, just a concept, and there is no substantive thing as a support point. For the future of the metaverse, they also did not give a clear answer. However, one thing is clear, that is, this concept can inspire practitioners in many industries to explore related fields or deep-level or cross-industry integration, especially the fields represented by virtual humans and NFT, etc., to achieve rapid development. across.
So what happened to all these explorations? In 2022, is the Metaverse still a sweet potato? Today, the editor will chat with you, whether the current Metaverse can still enter the arena.
Whether the metaverse can still enter the field, in fact, we can start with its current particularly hot track. At present, the four tracks of virtual human, social, VR/AR, and games are the hottest tracks in Metaverse. The former two are mostly small and medium-sized companies, while the latter two are more favored by technology giants.
According to Shilian.com, in the past year, games have the largest amount of financing, followed by social communities and VR/AR tracks. Among them, since the end of last year, VR/AR has gradually increased financing for C-end companies. In terms of "landing", virtual characters and social products are often promoted. For example, "Meet Gu", the digital avatar of Gu Ailing, the virtual person of the Winter Olympics, "Time Xiaoni", the newscaster, Dong Dong, the official digital person of the Winter Olympics, and the Olympic public welfare ambassador who loves REAI, etc., but VR/AR and The new product of the game has not been seen.
So, if you want to enter the metaverse, which track should you choose? At present, VR/AR and games are more attractive, and they account for a very large proportion in the Metaverse. But overall, the four major tracks of games, VR/AR, virtual people, and social networking are currently the focus of attention. It's just that it requires practitioners to have more patience and lower their expectations in terms of time. However, there are still a lot of wind chasers who just want to lower the stock price through acquisitions and other means, and then raise financing. This is very detrimental to the long-term development of the Metaverse.
In particular, Web 3.0, a new technological concept related to the metaverse, has become popular recently. In this new concept, information is published and kept by users, and this information is non-traceable and never leaked. It is worth noting that this information also has a clear right confirmation function. It has received widespread attention along with the popularity of digital currency, NFT, and metaverse concepts, and is called the next generation of the Internet.
But it also has flaws, that is, it is particularly dependent on blockchain technology, which makes it very risky in terms of supervision. In this regard, Musk also said that Web 3.0 needs a longer period of exploration, rather than relying on hype to cut leeks and make money. But even so, it does not affect the capital in the slightest. Many investors have said that they are currently paying close attention to the Web3.0 project, even if they understand the risks behind it. Some people in the industry lamented that this is all related to the lack of new standards in the current Internet industry.