The fiery metaverse has never lacked fans.
American science fiction master Neil Stephenson described the metauniverse in his novel avalanche: “put on headphones and eyeglasses, find the connection terminal, and you can enter the virtual space simulated by computer and parallel to the real world in the way of virtual separation.” As described in the Hollywood movie “the number one player”, separation is essential for people in the Internet age.
“This is the most mature way for venture to attract all young Internet users in the future,” said Ma Liyan, the founder of venture’s Internet business model
However, some investors believe that yuanuniverse is still “looking at flowers in the fog”.
On the 16th local time, roblox, a US listed company and the “first stock of the yuan universe”, plunged more than 26% after releasing less than expected earnings. So far this year, the company’s share price has fallen nearly 50%. This has also caused the market to question the profit prospects of metauniverse.
8 trillion dollar market
According to the latest report released by investment bank Morgan Stanley last month, in China, yuanuniverse is a market with a scale of US $8 trillion (about 51 trillion yuan). Technology giants such as Tencent, Alibaba and byte beat are increasing their investment in the virtual world.
In the United States, giants such as meta, Microsoft and apple, the parent company of Facebook, have also expressed their ambitions for the meta universe. Last month, Microsoft announced an all cash acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a game company, for nearly $70 billion.
MIHA tour, the developer of the popular game “original God”, also officially announced its entry into the meta universe recently. On February 14, MIHA tour announced that the company had created a cross media brand called hoyoverse. Although there is still little information about this new brand disclosed by the company at this stage, virtual reality, games and social media are regarded as some early applications of metauniverse.
In the announcement, Cai Haoyu, co-founder and CEO of MIHA tour, said: “hoyoverse’s mission is to create a virtual world integrating games, animation and other entertainment types, providing players with a high sense of freedom and immersion.”
This popular “krypton gold” game created about $2 billion in mobile player spending worldwide in its first year of launch. In 2021, it set a sales record of $400 million in the United States alone.
As a phenomenal project successfully incubated by MIHA tour, the original God will bring continuous income to the company and lay a solid user foundation for its overseas expansion. However, this open world game has no role-playing or player interaction, so it can not be regarded as a meta universe game.
As a Shanghai game company, mihayou is also cooperating with Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai to explore the role of brain computer interface technology in neural regulation in combination with the advantages of information technology and clinical research.
Last year, the China Mobile Communications Federation yuancosmos industry committee was announced to be established. The task of this industry organization is to formulate standards and technologies around yuancosmos, so as to promote the development of the latest technology boom, and carry out necessary supervision on the industry. On Wednesday, the above-mentioned institutions added 17 companies, and the number of members reached 112 enterprises or individuals. The latest group of members include listed companies Yingli media and Tuoxin technology.
Some Chinese cities are also looking for opportunities for the meta universe. At the end of last year, the “14th five year plan” for the development of high-end equipment industry in Shanghai was released, and a number of cutting-edge technologies related to metauniverse, including brain computer interface and virtual reality, were mentioned.
technology giants compete for hegemony
At present, there is no exact definition of metauniverse. The industry generally believes that metauniverse refers to technologies such as virtual reality and the idea that people may play games and live in the virtual world.
At the earnings conference call last November, Ma Huateng, founder of Tencent, said that metauniverse would be an opportunity to drive growth for existing industries such as games. Tencent is currently the world’s largest game company, with a strong combination of PC and mobile games and more than 1 billion wechat users. It has the function of social media.
In the view of senior users of Tencent, however, it does not mean that Tencent has a huge competitive base in the game. “The gamers of MIHA tour have a unique pursuit for online games and secondary elements, so the purity of users is high.” Ice cream also told the first financial reporter.
MIHA you, who became famous with the original God World War I, has a strong user base on mobile devices. According to sensortower, the open world fantasy game is the third largest mobile game in Apple App store and Google play, second only to Tencent’s glory of the king and survival of the Jedi.
China is the largest market of “original God” in the mobile terminal. In its first year of listing, on IOS alone, the game generated $577 million in revenue in the Chinese market, accounting for 28.6% of its total global revenue. Last year, mobile players around the world spent $2 billion on the original God.
Netease, another game giant, also set up a base in Hainan last year to focus on developing virtual world applications. However, compared with the rising star MIHA you, Netease, as a traditional game manufacturer, has reduced its attraction to the new generation of young people.
In addition to game companies, social and e-commerce giants also have the advantage of building a meta universe. In its recently released financial report, meta regarded tiktok, a subsidiary of Chinese technology giant byte beat, as a threat. In the past year, byte beat has made a big push into the game field. Last August, the company acquired Pico, a maker of virtual reality helmets.
“People have many choices about how to spend their time, and applications like tiktok are developing rapidly, and competition will bring short-term pressure to meta’s advertising business,” Facebook founder Zuckerberg told analysts on the earnings conference call
Alibaba also said this year that it plans to launch augmented reality glasses for virtual meetings. During the Beijing Winter Olympics, Alibaba launched a “virtual digital man” called Dongdong.
Ren Guoqiang, senior partner of Roland Berger and vice president of Greater China, told China business: “e-commerce and home service will develop with virtual social forms such as metauniverse, which will also promote the further integration of virtual and real economic consumption.”
He said that there have been some trend changes in consumption. For example, players represented by “generation Z” prefer “krypton gold” in online games to meet the needs of the virtual world and pay for improving their position in the virtual world.
the metacosmic world is not yet mature
Last year, baidu launched the virtual world application xirang, which can hold virtual activities for 100000 people online at the same time.
However, baidu executives played down their expectations for the meta universe application and said that the application has not reached the standard in many aspects, and it may take six years to fully launch.
Baidu’s concern is not unreasonable. Earlier this month, Samsung held its first virtual world conference in its virtual space 837x and released the galaxy S22 series of mobile phones. This is an attempt to break through history, but the effect did not meet expectations. Some participating media complained that technical problems forced them to return to reality to observe the conference.
However, Samsung’s exploration of releasing virtual space has still been affirmed by the industry. In the 837x internal space, players can complete exploration tasks and obtain collectable NFT badges and the exclusive limited supply of Samsung decentraland wearable device series to customize avatars. Decentraland is a blockchain driven virtual space in which exclusive digital assets can be bought and sold.
“Metauniverse applications may rely on cryptocurrency to some extent. For example, if you want to buy some virtual land or goods, you need to pay in digital currency, which will pose some regulatory challenges.” Zhang Junyi, the managing partner of Aowei consulting, told the first financial reporter.
Analysts said that the regulation of the meta universe world may have more detailed regulations.
Ma Wenyan recently said that relevant departments have formulated draft rules on “deep synthesis” technology, involving software that can be used to generate or edit voice, video, images and virtual settings. The draft overlaps with the previous rules formulated by China on algorithms. The special requirements of the two new rules will have an important impact on the participants of China’s meta universe industry.
In response to the business world’s concern about how to realize the meta universe, David baszucki, chief executive of roblox, said: “we are not involved in advertising or 3D immersive shopping. We have been very gentle in realization, and are mainly committed to developing high-quality user growth and creating a safe and civilized ecological platform.”
Because of “don’t understand”, coupled with many concerns, traditional game companies generally hold a conservative attitude towards entering the meta universe.
When Nintendo was recently asked about the company’s views on “metauniverse” and “non homogeneous token” (NFT), President juntaro Guchuan responded that they have some concerns about the concept of “metauniverse”, but they have no intention to enter this field at present.
“At this stage, we have no way to clearly define the form of the meta universe, nor do we know what kind of surprises and fun the meta universe will bring to users.” Guchuan said.
