By Adrian Krion, CEO and Founder of Spielworks
Metaverse funding dropped from $2.1 billion in Q4 of 2021 to around $760 million in Q3 of 2022, and yet Apple became the latest giant to announce its major Metaverse debut with a highly anticipated mixed reality headset coming out this spring. How much impact this development will have on the Metaverse’s long-term prospects is unclear, considering Apple CEO Tim Cook is more bullish on AR tech than “the Metaverse” as a concept.
Whether intended to or not, Apple’s new headset will have major implications for the broader industry building Metaverse infrastructure and applications. And the Silicon Valley giant isn’t alone: 43 of the world’s top 100 brands have already tested the Web3 waters, including many during the ongoing down market. With so much attention on Metaverse and Web3 projects from serious players in tech, as well as outside, what can we expect to come out of the industry in the coming months?
What can the military tell us about Web3?
Apple’s announcement doesn’t change much at all about the Metaverse’s potential. After all, it was only last year that analysts predicted it would develop into a trillion-dollar industry, with Bloomberg forecasting the digital environment to blossom into a $2.5 trillion market by 2030. Furthermore, Apple has reportedly engaged in R&D activities surrounding augmented reality (AR) since at least 2015, adding some context to the recent report. Even before that, Facebook bought VR hardware company Oculus for $2 billion, which became the centerpiece of its expedition into the VR and gaming realm.
Numerous crypto scandals and the down market have, by association, damaged the general public’s views and opinions on the Metaverse, leaving some to assume it will exist solely as a platform for gamers and crypto enthusiasts. This would be naive, given Apple’s first mixed reality hardware combined with other Big Tech initiatives, such as Amazon’s NFT and blockchain gaming plan, solidifying Web3 advocates’ belief that the Metaverse will transform our digital lives.
Getting a better peek into what the Metaverse may become involves looking at military adoption of AR and VR technologies. Throughout modern history, militaries have been the leading driver of technology developments. The internet is a case in point example: The first prototype of the internet was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1969 to enable inter-computer communication through a singular network. The project was decommissioned in 1989, enabling the establishment of the World Wide Web protocol, which made the internet accessible to civilians.
Armies across the globe are already using AR to train soldiers for combat in the most intense and detailed scenarios thanks to advances in data and graphic processing. The technology is also being used by militaries for servicing and maintaining vehicles, aircrafts, and other equipment. AR is increasingly sought after by militaries looking to gain a leg up on rivals, and with time, these advanced use-cases will be adopted and tailored for civilian use.
But how can military usage provide us with wider insights into what the “work-in-progress” Metaverse might develop into?
What to expect
By following military use cases of AR and VR and connecting them with Big Tech hardware, we can start to imagine and predict what the Metaverse may evolve into over the coming years. But during the most recent crypto bull market, and following Facebook’s rebranding as Meta, many products adopted the Metaverse label, but in reality, they were nothing more than another browser-based gaming platform.
Sure, the Metaverse, or better yet Metaverse experiences, will feature digital hangouts, live-virtual shows, NFTs, and avatars, but it will also serve as the foundation of our digital lives. It’s best to think of the Metaverse going forward as the gateway to the future internet—Web3.
Web3 developers are already hard at work building and designing a wide range of immersive experiences that blend VR and AR with gaming, social media, and online shopping. And let’s not forget, with the growing remote work trends, the Metaverse will also creep into your professional life as a way to produce greater teleworker camaraderie, improve collaboration, and enhance training processes—as already seen with the U.S. military.
We got a taste during the past bull run with many major brands, particularly in fashion, exploring new ways to engage new and old audiences in Metaverse and Web3 settings. Over time, expect to see brands of all shapes and sizes turn to the Metaverse to reinvent themselves, or go viral, while simultaneously reimaging the world of digital advertising and e-commerce.
Predicting when the Metaverse era will officially start is anyone’s game, but it will arrive. In the nearer future, anticipate more advanced games, interoperability, NFTs with more utility, interactive online shopping with crypto, and off-the-chart demand for plots of digital land.
Those engaging in Metaverse activities today are akin to beta testers looking to find flaws and provide useful feedback. Metaverse infrastructure is currently under construction, and it's all an investment, and a speculative one at that. But there is no doubt the Metaverse will play a major role in our future digital lives.
AR is capturing the imagination of Big Tech, and Web3 developers are working to apply that vision to what will hopefully, one day, be a trillion-dollar industry. And as the Metaverse concept becomes more concrete, it will thrive because it will be an end-to-end social and entertainment platform capable of hosting an entire economy.
About the author:
Adrian Krion is the CEO and Founder of the Berlin-based blockchain gaming startup Spielworks and maker of the user-friendly gaming wallet Wombat. Having started programming at age seven, Adrian has been successfully bridging business and tech for more than 15 years, currently working on projects that connect the emerging DeFi ecosystem to the gaming world.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.