From the chatrooms of the late 2000s to the streaming wars of today and the online concerts in video games such as the Ariana Grande event in Fortnite all are examples of Metaversical elements in tech territories.
But what exactly is Metaverse?
Metaverse is a combination of the words ‘Meta’ and ‘Universe’. It can be considered as a network of virtual worlds where the Internet is a singular universe. Additionally, the concept of ‘etageres’ finds its implementation in the Metaverse to showcase Hardware, Software, Video Games and Virtual Reality. But, here is the twist. The Metaverse experiences will not remain limited to Plain Jane Video Games. Instead, they will become extremely immersive. People will be able to interact within different Metaverses and entirely new economies will emerge which will help the contributors. Though we don’t know what will be the dominant platform for Metaverse, video games will surely play a huge role.
Has Microsoft has killed Facebook’s Metaverse even before its launch?
Microsoft has been focussed on building a gaming empire over the years. It has launched some really popular games in the past. It also bought Minecraft for billions of dollars. It was followed by acquisition of ZeniMax media in 2020 for $7.5 billion. ZeniMax media owns the games like Doom and Fallout. It also bought Activision for $69 billion. But launching the games alone isn’t enough. Recently, Microsoft acquired the game developer Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Microsoft owns one of the most popular gaming platforms, Xbox. Meta, on the other hand, only bought Oculus a few years ago. However, Microsoft’s strategy for Metaverse doesn’t seem limited to Video Games but also comes across as a collaborative board room interaction. For example, the meeting app Microsoft Teams will become more than just a meeting and comment sharing app. That is all part of Microsoft’s Metaverse strategy.
Facebook has security challenges
The decreasing popularity of Facebook and breach of data privacy are some of the factors which may create hurdles in Zuckerberg’s vision of Metaverse. A couple of weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg talked about the decline in the number of users. The drop also recorded a dip in the stock prices of Facebook. Who will win the war of the Metaverse remains to be seen. However, for now, the odds seem to be favouring Microsoft over Meta.
