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CES 2022 attendees film every bizarre use of the ‘metaverse’
“One of my oldest friends recently told me that from now on I’m going to be his ‘Metaverse Guy’. It’s scary to me because despite hearing people say ‘like the Metaverse’ for years, I still Not sure what it actually means” in the real world. A trip to CES made it very clear to me: it doesn’t make any sense. It’s an empty buzzword that can mean anything a marketer wants. “
This is what Nima Zeighami told me to follow him Huge Twitter post captures every mention of the word ‘metaverse’ at CES 2022. This year, he attended major tech fairs, met people, experienced the latest tech, and helped him as a technical product manager for immersive products – focusing on AR/AR/Lightfield technologies – and he found a lot of “Metaverse” “.
“Start Your Company’s XR Metaverse” It’s a software consulting firm that registers a domain name for you, gives you an NFT they mint, and then makes you pay them a small sum to build an NFT they can’t stream to the network The Unreal experience even runs at 20fps. pic.twitter.com/LfPhnb1YfuJanuary 5, 2022
MCity doesn’t sound that interesting, though. First you have to go through the land registry, then what, virtual tax? A virtual economic collapse? No, it can’t happen.
So what does the metaverse ultimately boil down to? I visited a VR music festival, a social event to explore and share social experiences, and I really liked it. Clearly, there’s more to VR and AR than just games, and social apps make good use of this technology. But do these have to be marked as metaverses? Is VR chat a virtual world? Is Second Life a Metaverse? Do we need the term metaverse, or did we get along just fine before it was popularized by terms like “VR”, “AR” and “Internet”?
“The Real Metaverse” is packed for everyone, we found it! A true metaverse! pic.twitter.com/v1kQOLbuOMJanuary 6, 2022
“Everyone thinks the metaverse and VR are somehow connected,” Zeighami said. “I think if there is a real ‘metaverse’ where all kinds of devices can connect to it at different times. Phones, laptops, VR headsets, AR headsets, 3D displays, etc. It has to be open and fully interoperable . You know, like the internet.
I think “metaverse” is just a new marketing buzzword for the internet.
“I think ‘metaverse’ is just a new marketing buzzword for the internet. There’s no value in using a new word because VR, AR and 3D already work (almost) perfectly on the current internet. I think the people being marketed just don’t I know,” Zeighami said.
That’s the same conclusion our own Wes Fenlon reached late last year in unabashed words in the Metaverse.
There are shades of grey in that definition: some companies seem to be totally leaning towards the notion of an actual “metaverse”, throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks, while others might actually have some interesting technology, These techniques have been taken from top to bottom. We’re so used to hardware companies ranting about concepts left and right at CES 2022 to get attention, so it’s hard to blame anyone for trying — but let’s be blunt.
“Here comes Untethered VR and the Metaverse!” If they do make a wireless adapter for Index, that’s the first company I’ll give a pass to. It’s still a ridiculous term, but the real value gets passed. pic.twitter.com/sWO2A84VyqJanuary 6, 2022
One such company on the subject of Zeighami is UnlinkVR, a company specializing in laser-driven wireless virtual reality. Is that a virtual world device? No! This is a VR device. Does this sound like a good idea? Hell yeah, I’ll give it a try.
The point is, this doesn’t have to be a strong indictment of the company or its “Metaverse” products that use the word heavily.Although some seem a bit over there. More importantly, it is an indictment of the widely abused and misunderstood term itself.
Most of these CES 2022 booths were advertising building VR applications, experiences and interaction models. So cool, it’s not a magical connected wonderland where people go shopping in a virtual supermarket, buy food for their virtual house, buy clothes for their virtual kids, where they watch virtual movies and play with virtual friends wearing crafted skins Virtual game Fortnite. Not so great, VR/AR/3D experiences are great, I’ve been saying that for years, but they can definitely be better, more engaging, more engaging.
But big tech shows like CES do love buzzwords after all, don’t they?