Summary Bullets:

• The metaverse fell hard because of how high it flew, and initial metaverse world implementations had severe technical and social flaws.

• Metaverse worlds may not survive, but AR/VR/XR will. These technologies have strong enterprise use cases and potential for more as the technology grows.

During our annual predictions exercise in late 2022, I predicted that the metaverse (AR/VR/XR) was going into a winter, a period of decline, frustration, and of course the airing of the metaverse grievances. Every technology goes through a cycle of hype and decline, the bigger the hype, the bigger the decline. Interest in metaverse was so high, companies were creating metaverse divisions, making bold predictions, and in general very publicly spending money. After all, Mark Zukerberg wouldn’t have renamed his company and spent billions on nothing, would he? The hype on metaverse was artificially boosted by another technology segment that specializes in hype and hot air, namely crypto/blockchain/Web3. Claims were that the metaverse couldn’t function without blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and it would be the first big ‘Web3’ application to hit the market. All the arrows pointed up and the fear of missing out got checks written and plans altered.

The first factor that brough on the metaverse winter was the technology itself. Simply not ready, cumbersome, glitch prone, and expensive. As to the metaverse worlds, multiplayer games had better graphics, control, and interactions… and frankly had for years. Metaverse worlds looked amateur and hadn’t even implemented the base rules to keep human interaction within the scope of acceptable public behavior. Anyone who has played a MMRPG, well, EVER, or spent five minutes on Reddit could have predicted that need.

The second factor was reality coming to the crypto/blockchain crowd. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are perfectly fungible and don’t change copyright law one whit. Buying land in a metaverse world was stupid on its face, an attempt to bring real-world limitations to an infinite digital environment to enable yet another digital market. Suddenly the metaverse was looking pretty shaky. Or as one clever YouTube documentary described it “The Future Is a Dead Mall.”

While the metaverse worlds may feel like a liminal space, Mark Zukerberg’s and other investor billions into AR/VR/XR technology are not wasted. The AR/VR/XR is revolutionary, if not the way metaverse proclaimers thought. We are seeing considerable investment and even some real world use, particularly of augmented reality. Transportation and field services are particularly fertile ground, providing heads-up help at the point of the work. Education has huge potential as does design/engineering.

The metaverse may be in an all but permanent winter, but the technology, AR/VR/XR, will succeed.