Can the Metaverse Live Up to Its Hype? Tech Leaders Debate | WSJ Tech News Briefing

foreign [Music] for Friday November 25th I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal the concept of the metaverse sprung into the mainstream last year some companies have started up or refocused their businesses to work on building hardware and software for what they see as the future of the online World a digital realm where we can hang out work shop maybe even enjoy all the things we normally do in the real world but so far the metaverse has struggled to live up to its Mega hype at this year's wsj Tech live event I posed questions about the metaverse and its future to two people who've been outspoken about it Herman narula is the chief executive of improbable worlds a provider of metaverse infrastructure and applications and a big believer in the potential of the metaverse he even wrote a book about it Phil libben is the co-founder and CEO of two startups artificial intelligence company all turtles and Video Communications company and he's much more doubtful about the cultural and financial possibilities of the metaverse here are highlights from our conversation thank you guys both for joining me uh Herman I want to start with you and I want to start with a bit of news that was reported in the journal it was that Facebook's or say meta's metaverse platform had about as many users as the population of Sioux Falls and that is to say not very many so what is meta doing wrong when it comes to the metaverse and who is the metaverse for well that's a big question I will say that the actual number is probably significantly lower so just for the benefit of the audience whenever you hear monthly active users divide by 10 they get how many people are actually there on a given day and divide by 10 again to get a sense of how many people are there in this moment so if somebody says they have 200 000 monthly active uses well you know that's not a lot of people on on an actual moment-to-moment basis in terms of what is Facebook doing wrong look it's far for me to kind of criticize and preach about what a giant corporation like that should do but what I would say is there are a lot of lessons we can already see from the computer games industry there's a reason why blizzard and other companies don't announce titles before they've found product Market fit and in the end Horizon worlds is essentially a video game I mean it's more like a game than it's like any idea of the metabus that I would recognize I think prematurely hailing an unfinished game as the future of a multi-billion user cooperation is a really difficult thing to see working out successfully isn't the metaverse I mean for gamers they're the ones who kind of are naturally attracted to this idea of interacting online of having you know a different character isn't that what actually I don't think it is um so improbable works with about 60 different Global Publishers we just worked on the new um Modern Warfare if you uh if you've seen that and a lot of other games this isn't really part of our metaverse business we support these Publishers develop lots of difficult multiple problems and over the last years our metabus businesses kind of exploded not a single one of our customers in that space has come from computer games the reason for that is video games already work well the metaverse is the idea at least in my view that you can start connecting these experiences together and that's a lot less interesting to games companies than it is to say sports leagues or fashion brands Phil I want to bring you into this you're a metaverse skeptic so how do you feel about the idea that the metaverse is for fashion brands or for events I'm not a matter of skeptic I think I'm more of a metaverse hater I think uh but but in particular uh look it's kind of pointless ever like betting against the broad technology like you know obviously at some point someone is going to make something that's going to succeed and you know can always be able to tie it back to the metaverse and so long term I'm always very bullish on just about every technology I think the Facebook vision of the metaverse is it's so stupid it makes me sad um it it accomplishes nothing if you're having a hard time really understanding what wait what are we talking about again what is this thing again that's okay for like an hour it's okay for a day but if like if you find yourself like it's like a weekend and you're still not sure and everyone is saying something you're not sure what it is like chances are you're not sure because it's dumb it's really nothing sometimes the emperor really does have no clothes okay so apart from maybe agreeing on meta's abilities let's put them aside how is the metaverse going to exist and I had a colleague frame it as is it indoors or Outdoors so is it AR VR I think these are the wrong questions and they're questions that are prompted by what you refer to as the incredible stupidity around you know the discourse Facebook has cooped around one of us let's start in a simple Place let's not even use the word none of us what kind of experiences do people desire well the research tells us that they desire fulfilling experiences I rant about this in my book they want experiences that give them feelings of competence or autonomy or relatedness they want to feel as though they can make meaningful choices have meaningful relationships with people if we're going to build a new product without using the m word whatever that new product is if it involves having experiences online it better provide people more fulfillment than they can otherwise receive through Alternatives including the real world and including video games so now we can narrow our scope of discussion quite a lot what sort of experiences are not possible today that we should make possible and how might they relate to each other I'll give you an example if you're a Manchester United fan in Southeast Asia you've probably never been to well there's a Manchester United fan right there um you've probably never been to a game you've never heard the Roar of the crowd you've never experienced what it's like to be surrounded by thousands of other fans or meet your favorite players if we could make that experience happen then that would be desirable that would be valuable that's not something you can have today Phil do you buy that do you think people are going to want to have the same experiences that they might be able to in person in a metaverse well I think I just read Herman's book it's a very nice vision of of where the world can go uh which which I buy completely I think we have some disagreement on a few things particularly timelines I think like what you're talking about is not within the investable Horizon of anyone in this room I think we're decades and decades and decades out for for some of that stuff basically you can have the experience that you described of going to a football match you can do it by going to a football match and I think it's better for us to for the collect of us to build a world where more people can have those experiences by going physically to the places that they want by experiencing the things that they want to experience maybe not to a particular team maybe to their local team maybe they can live in places that have more outdoor space that have more access to Recreation maybe they can have jobs that don't force them to waste all their time commuting or sitting in traffic and they've got time for their life and I think like now more than at any other time in history it's time to invest in the real world and really just not try to figure out what we can do with a with a piece of plastic duct tape to our face and what about the brands that are getting into this I mean we've got what Nike Coca-Cola L'Oreal are these Brands going to regret their metaverse Investments yeah yeah yeah they're going to regret them Nike in particular because people no matter of us don't even have feeds I don't know uh look I think VR is a dead end I think there are certain experiences that make sense in VR those experiences are few those experiences are far between those experiences have been with us for 20 years there hasn't been meaningfully new innovation in VR and there won't be because uh there's this fallacy that what people want is more immersion and actually people don't want immersion most of the time that's why most of us spend most of our time on the least immersive devices possible our phones instead of you know sitting on big uh in front of big TVs that's why 3D movies which have been around since the 60s have not replaced you know normal movies but what about AR I mean it's not the only way to potentially engage in the metaverse augmented reality I think is great I think it's well it's not great yeah it barely exists right now but it has very high potential and when the headsets are there when when I can wear something that's not that much bigger than glasses and I can actually see all of you really with my eyeballs and on top of that have things augmented superimposed as a way to improving the current reality not substituting it then sure there's all sorts of use cases I mean Herman I want to let you jump in here because I you know you must have some thought yeah I'd say um the bot we agree upon is that immersion is the wrong goal look at the most successful games of the last few years fortnite Roblox Minecraft they look less sophisticated than games that came before why is that why would that be it's because it's not about immersion the promise of of a well-defined well-functioning and investable metaverse is not a VR headset it's presence it's the idea that you can interact with the world in more interesting ways and that interaction results in fulfilling experiences I think to dismiss the metaverse is the same as saying like sport fashion culture all of that stuff it's just a waste of time let's focus on the real world what is the real world we already live in a world of ideas a mechanism to turn that world of ideas into something more accessible more concrete more useful is certainly a virtuous goal I will say the thing we haven't talked about here which is what we should be talking about what we should be talking about is digital assets because what's really changed what really creates opportunity is that now you said that Nike L'Oreal and there was another company you mentioned Coca-Cola Coca-Cola will regret them out of us Investments I can't speak to Coca-Cola and L'Oreal but Nike with their purchase of artifact one of the most prominent digital asset Brands and with an incredible opportunity to create interactive experiences on top of what they already do I think it's really really Brave we'll have to leave it there Airman Phil thank you guys for joining us thank you all right that's it for Tech news briefing this week our producer is Julie Chang our supervising producer is Chris sinsley and I'm your host Zoe Thomas thanks for listening and have a great weekend foreign 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Channel: WSJ News

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Keywords: metaverse, metaverse news, tech industry, metaverse future, what's the future of the metaverse, phil libin, all turtles, mmhmm, phil libim mmhmm, modern warfare metaverse, call of duty metaverse, video games, video game metaverse, video games vs metaverse, vr, microsoft metaverse, tech, news, metaverse 2023, metaverse hype, debate, experts debate, tech sector, metaverse industry, techy

Id: CYNnX2RJqC8

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022