‘Metaverse’ is one of the most searched words of 2022. Everyone talks about it, but very few know what it really is. And, above all, very few use it. Is the Metaverse going to be a failure?
The first to seriously bet on this new project was Mark Zuckerberg. The patron of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has staked everything on conquering the Metaverse, investing enormous resources in its exploration. But the latest quarterly figures speak for themselves: Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is struggling to take off and risks to be a failure.
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Is Zuckerberg’s Metaverse a failure?
There are only 200,000 active users on the Horizon Worlds platform, far fewer than the 500,000 that Mark had set himself to reach by the end of 2022. The issue is not only the low uptake among the public, but also the excessive weight and size of the visors.
Overcoming the technological barriers will take time, probably five to ten years. Shareholders, however, cannot wait that long before seeing the exorbitant profits everyone expects.
Meta’s stock has suffered a resounding 20% drop, which only adds to the vertiginous annual drop that has already cost Zuckerberg and his team the cancellation of more than 550 billion in market cap. It is a very hard blow for the social giant, which is also suffering from increasingly stringent restrictions on the use of data and privacy.
Metaverse risking failure: how is Meta reacting?
It seems that Mark Zuckerberg has been struck by a curse. Whenever he sets to work and produces something for Metaverse and cryptocurrencies the result is not one of the best.
But how did Meta react to this unplanned and unanticipated failure? By promising that the development team will work hard to make ‘major updates to Horizon Worlds’.
Will this promise be enough and, more importantly, will they have the necessary funds to make something ‘spacey’?
Horizon Worlds: another failure on the horizon?
Meta doesn’t seem to get one right when it comes to cryptocurrencies and the Metaverse. After the failure of Facebook’s crypto Libra renamed Diem, but without success, here we are again, talking about another potential hole in the water.
This time it is Horizon Worlds, the game in the Metaverse launched by Meta, that is a flop. Too bad, however, that users have not been lenient with the newcomer, so much so that they have posted heavy criticism of its graphics. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the company, assured in a statement:
“Major updates to Horizon are coming soon, including improving the visual style of your avatars. The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more, even on headsets. Horizon is improving very quickly.”
Read also: How is Metaverse revolutionising technology
Are we facing the end of an empire?
The main problem is that Meta seems to be trying to go through multiple projects without doing any of them well.
In fact, even though it has been working on Horizon, the company has been focusing on virtual reality for some time now, investing several billion dollars.
There is talk of around $10 billion being spent on developing this. An effort that is investing in the new Meta division working to create the Rality Labs Metaverse, but which is not yet bearing the desired fruit.
Read also: Top 7 Metaverse influencers to follow
