Facebook changed its name to META
I think Facebook trying to dominate whole VR AR market.
In June 2018, Oculus executive Jason Rubin sent an email to Facebook board member Marc Andreessen with the subject line “The Metaverse.”
“We believe that the right way to break through consumer indifference to VR is to deliver what they expect and want from the medium: THE METAVERSE,” reads the first slide of a 50-page document outlining a strategy for building a virtual world.
“The first metaverse that gains real traction is likely to the be the last,” Rubin wrote. “We must act first, and go big, or we risk being one of those wannabes.”
Facebook had the potential to effectively shut competitors like Google, Apple, Sony, HTC and Valve out of the VR market, he wrote, adding that Sony was focused on the PlayStation 5, HTC was unhappy with its potential hardware partners and Facebook was investing more than Valve, the maker of Steam.
“Google and Apple don’t really exist in VR in any real way yet,” the document said. “Daydream is a joke,” Rubin wrote, referencing a VR platform that Google ended up discontinuing a year later.
–Priya gets married—
In one section, Rubin outlines a scenario featuring a fictional user named Priya, who visits the metaverse. Priya enters a virtual city equipped with a bowling alley, stores, theaters and a Facebook pavilion described as “the largest building, almost church like in its dominance of the square.”
Priya can interact with others and use the metaverse currency to pay for her avatar’s new hair style. Priya eventually meets another user who looks like a green and warty ogre. They end up getting married.
“The only thing she spends as much time doing as she spends in the Metaverse is working, eating, socializing, and sleeping in the IRL ‘MEATverse,'” Rubin wrote. “Her entertainment time is spent more and more virtually. This is aided by Netflix, Facebook, Instagram and other Metaverse integrations.”
A decade into this hypothetical scenario, Rubin says the company’s metaverse would reach 100 million hardware units sold, with 50% being Oculus branded or licensed and the rest coming from other hardware makers.
Within two decades, time spent in the metaverse could rival that of “TV in the 90’s and Facebook in recent years.” And most importantly for Facebook, “net revenue after developer payout is billions a year,” he wrote. That would come from the sale of virtual real estate, hats, weapons and status symbols.
Revenue would also come from ads, the market Facebook knows best. Rubin imagines Coca-Cola paying for prime placement of a pavilion, Ford paying for its virtual cars to be usable or Procter & Gamble promoting its brands on digital billboards. Gucci could open a virtual store and Comcast (owner of CNBC parent NBCUniversal) would pay for “a giant sign that says, ‘Comcast: Get Better MetaSpeed!'”
“If the Metaverse is where people are spending time, then it is where the real economy will want to be,” Rubin wrote. “It is our goal to bring the Metaverse to this stage. Anything short doesn’t seem like it is a Facebook product.”
So in the end if facebook achieved first to create experience like ready player one.
Then it will be cash cow.
