Last year, the metaverse did not really keep all its promises. Despite the colossal investments made by several giants, the digital worlds accessible in augmented or virtual reality have not yet broken through. The general public, caught up in the economic crisis and inflation, is struggling to take an interest in the metaverse. Sales of VR headsets in 2022 prove it. Over the past year, this market has declined by 12% worldwide.
This lack of interest is visible in France. According to a study by publisher GetApp, 49% of French people do not know the metaverse, and only 8% of respondents have already connected to a digital world. To convince consumers of the revolution represented by the metaverse, brands will have to roll up their sleeves in 2023. We take stock of the big novelties in the boxes of the manufacturers for the next twelve months.
Read also : Orange and the major European operators want to make Big Tech pay to prepare the metaverse
Key improvements at Meta
The metaverse is the great obsession of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta. To bring his dream to life, the billionaire injected over $21 billion in Reality Labs, the metaverse division, within two years. Without success so far.
Horizon Worlds, the virtual reality world imagined by Meta, is the laughingstock of internet users… and company employees. They neglect to connect regularly to the platform, believing that it is not up to date. In this context, the metaverse did not fulfill its objectives. Horizon Worlds Doesn’t Matter than 200,000 monthly active users, far from Meta’s expectations. Initially, the firm hoped to pass the milestone of 500,000 users before 2023.
To raise the bar, Mark Zuckerberg announced the arrival of a handful of novelties. First, the firm will refine the experience offered by Horizon Worlds. The giant will focus on improved performance and graphics. Meta has indeed undertaken to deploy ” major Horizon graphics updates », with several supporting illustrations.
Horizon Worlds avatars should also evolve. Mocked on social networks, Mark Zuckerberg promised to launch more realistic 3D avatars in the near future. Above all, Meta plans to offer a pair of legs to the avatars of his metaverse. Clearly, the Californian firm seeks to move away from simplistic visuals that put off Internet users.
In a second step, Meta will launch a version of Horizon Worlds accessible through a web browser, without the need for a virtual reality headset. Thanks to this Web version, Meta will be able to build bridges between its still very popular social networks and its unloved metaverse. This version should therefore help the company to attract more Internet users. After having aroused the (moderate) curiosity of technophiles, Meta must now catch the eye of the general public… and this one does not necessarily want to invest in a helmet.
The long-awaited arrival of Apple
This time is the right one? According to a bundle of leaks, Apple is finally set to enter the virtual and augmented reality industry. The brand would present a mixed reality headset from June 2023. A first presentation of the accessory would be planned at WWDC 2023, the conference for developers, before marketing in the fall. Observers expect Apple’s foray to boost the entire VR market.
To accompany its hybrid headset, the Cupertino group would intend to deploy its own metaverse. This digital world would be made up of a vast offer of 3D experiences, within which Internet users could interact. Apple would also have developed a video on demand service with 3D programs produced by big names in Hollywood cinema.
The rise of augmented reality
Under the impetus of Apple, augmented reality should continue to become popular. The American company has never hidden its appetite for AR experiences. For Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, augmented reality is elsewhere a breakthrough as crucial as the Internet :
“In the future, people will wonder how we ever lived without augmented reality. Just like today, we wonder how people like me grew up without the internet”.
That’s why the brand’s first helmet should be a hybrid accessory, which combines virtual and augmented reality. Meta should also participate in the popularization of augmented reality. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg’s group also unveiled its first headset for mixed reality, the Meta Quest Pro. Primarily aimed at professionals, the high-end headset is primarily designed to display AR experiences. Meta has focused its communication on collaborative workwith a virtual desktop that appears superimposed on reality.
In parallel, the outsider HTC continues to enrich its range of AR accessories. The Taiwanese company has also lifted the veil on the VIVE XR Elite, a solution halfway between the VR headset and the pair of AR glasses. Marketed at over $1,000, it directly competes with Meta’s Quest Pro.
Note that augmented reality has established itself as one of the major trends in the CES 2023. In Las Vegas, industry giants and many start-ups gave demonstrations related to augmented reality. These include TCL’s AR/VR glasses, the RayNeo X2. Powered by a Snapdragon XR2 processor, they allow, for example, to display an instantaneous translation in front of the wearer’s eyes. You will have understood: almost everyone is getting into augmented reality.
Snapchat, the video-sharing application, will also continue to contribute to the popularization of AR technologies. The app will roll out a host of new experiences later this year. In partnership with Orange, Snapchat has notably planned to develop playful AR solutions based on 5G networks.
For Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat, it is rather augmented reality that represents the future of the metaverse. Virtual reality, which cuts the user off from the real world, is of less interest to the company. Note that AR experiences have also multiplied on other social networks, including the now essential TikTok. Through filters and other effects, the general public is gradually becoming familiar with this technology.
“Over 250 million people use augmented reality on Snapchat every day”explains Snapchat in a press release.
It’s only abouta first step for augmented reality. By 2025, pairs of connected AR glasses will flood the market. Meta would have planned to market its first pair of AR glasses in 2024. To achieve its ends, the Menlo Park company turned to the specialist Ray-Ban. It is rumored that Apple would come to compete with Meta glasses from 2026 with the Apple Glasses. Even if the latest news from this front indicates rather that the project would be put on hold indefinitely, the time that the available technologies mature. When it arrives, the project should boost sales of AR glasses and accessories… and could boost the adoption of the metaverse.
Blockchain metaverse competition
At the same time, blockchain-based digital worlds should continue to offer strong alternatives to Horizon Worlds. Despite the cryptocurrency crash, these platforms have a host of new things up their sleeve. Early January, The Sandboxthe metaverse made in Francehas also announced a new version of the GameMakerthe framework that facilitates the design of experiences and games on the blockchain.
Thank you for making last year’s favorite moments a reality and for being a part of this incredible community. Together, we are building a decentralized virtual world with $SANDLAND and #NFTs owned by YOU! ?https://t.co/m2JE4CbN2K
— The Sandbox (@TheSandboxGame) January 10, 2023
Less known, the metaverse Somnium Space has planned to release its own virtual reality headset later this year, the Somnium VR1. The firm will allow buyers to design accessories compatible with the helmet using 3D printing.
In addition, another blockchain metaverse will see the light of day in 2023: xWorlds. Based on the blockchain of MultiversX, formerly Elrond, this virtual world promises high-flying graphics and a plethora of features for cryptocurrency and NFT holders.
The invasion of brands curbed
Between 2021 and 2022, a host of brands have launched into metaverse under the influence of Meta. For example, Samsung opened a virtual store in Decentraland. In this same world, Netflix has set up a space devoted to the film The Gray Man. We also remember Nikeland, Nike’s virtual reality store, within Roblox.
These brands have paid significant sums to buy plots and install virtual premises on them. Asked by 01net, Philippe Buyens, managing director of the real estate agency Capifrance, believes that brands had no choice but to invest in land in the metaverse:
“Some players, especially those who missed the e-commerce revolution, are taking positions because these will be meeting places for their customers.”
The trend is expected to continue later this year as technologies like virtual reality hit the mainstream. The economic crisis should nevertheless partially curb the ardor brands. The looming recession therefore risks hampering the boom in virtual real estate. However, it would only be a setback, believes Philippe Buyens:
“The crisis may slow down the democratization of the metaverse a little bit, but that will not prevent it from developing”.
The inevitable combination with AI
In recent months, generative artificial intelligences, such as ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion or Character.AI, have been talked about a lot. Thanks to machine learning, these tools are able to simulate a conversation, design images in seconds or answer an infinite number of queries.
It can be expected that this tendency will not take long to combine with that of the metaverses. By combining technologies such as AI with mixed reality, the Internet user could, for example, interact with an intelligent and realistic simulation in VR/AR. Those chatbots can take care of customer support in virtual shops.
Given recent advances in the language model, this is no longer science fiction. It is with this in mind that Freshworks, a software publisher specializing in chatbotsworks, explains its director Simon Ma to Tech Wire Asia :
“In the metaverse, users will interact not only with other users, but also with digital avatars which are 3D versions of chatbots. Powered by conversational AI, these digital avatars will be able to react and […] to help customers shop online”.
We will conclude this article with Michael Kagan’s predictionNvidia’s technical director in charge of the Nvidia Omniverse, the collaborative metaverse in the cloud:
“If 2022 was the year the metaverse captured global attention, then 2023 will be the year it becomes a reality for users of all types: consumers, employees, researchers, and more.”
See you on the same date, in a year, to see if this optimistic momentum was founded…
