Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is super optimistic about the Metaverse, but its much-hyped digital world is getting off to a rocky start.
Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, is super optimistic about its Metaverse, but its much-hyped digital world is getting off to a rocky start. Meta opened up access to Horizon Worlds last month, enabling regular users and VR enthusiasts to hop on the bandwagon that many believe will be the next big platform in tech after social media. However, the launch has been marred with a number of controversies, including reports of toxic behavior and sexual harassment.
The Metaverse is already facing headwinds from many different quarters, including warnings from experts that hyper-realistic 3D avatars in the virtual world could negatively impact the body image of young people in the real world. However, that isn’t stopping a host of companies from jumping on the Metaverse bandwagon, with Microsoft, NVIDIA, Snap, Roblox, Tencent, and many others already working on creating similar digital environments of their own.
Meta/Facebook last month announced a number of VR concerts in the Metaverse by big-name stars, including rapper Young Thug, DJ David Guetta, and EDM group ‘The Chainsmokers.’ The three concerts were held as planned during the last week of December, but none of them racked up the views that Meta would have been hoping for, in spite of being completely free. Young Thug’s performance drew around 125,000 views when checked on Jan 5, while Guetta’s performance got just 906,000. The concert by the Chainsmokers seems to be unavailable currently for reasons that are unclear.
Metaverse Concerts Drew Very Few Viewers
The poor attendance figures at the free Metaverse concerts are in direct contrast to the tens of millions of viewers that Travis Scott’s concert drew on Fortnite last year. It’s not immediately clear as to why these concerts drew such a poor audience, but it might have something to do with the fact that the Metaverse remains a bit of a novelty for most people. Another reason can be that most of the concerts were not fully optimized for a VR experience.
While Guetta’s concert was a standard 2D livestream of his performance at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Young Thug and The Chainsmokers reportedly offered only a 180-degree view of their performances, rather than a full 360-degree view that VR enthusiasts have come to expect. Whatever the reason, the viewership numbers for the concerts left a lot of be desired, and Meta would know that more than anyone else. It remains to be seen if things pick up with more publicity this year, but one thing’s for certain – Meta still has a lot of work to do before the Metaverse can truly match Mark Zuckerberg’s vision.
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