Silicon Valley tech CEOs aren’t big fans of the Metaverse

At a Wall Street Journal event, Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel made it clear they’re not big fans of the metaverse in its current form.

Spencer called the current iteration of the Metaverse a “poorly constructed video game”, citing the ecosystem’s crappy graphics and low-quality interface.

Microsoft’s gaming chief says the game world is still better than the Metaverse at creating a variety of engaging virtual worlds. At the same time, he compared most of his current Metaverse projects to meetings in his virtual reality room, explaining:

“Video game creators have an amazing ability to build compelling worlds that we love to spend time in. […] For me, it’s about building a metaverse that’s like a conference room… but I realize I don’t want to spend most of my time there. “

Spiegel, on the other hand, likens the Metaverse experience to “living inside a computer,” and argues that the current iteration of concepts is so basic that it makes one feel like spending time in it after a long day at work. I implied that I would not.

He added that Snap is focused on minimizing hardware and bringing experiences into the real world through augmented reality (AR), and is eyeing trends in virtual reality (VR) hardware in the Metaverse. increase.

VR creates immersive virtual environments, while AR augments real-world scenes. VR requires a headset device, AR does not. VR users move through a completely fictional world, while AR users come into contact with the real world.

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Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, says the metaverse is “a word I never use,” reflecting Apple’s focus on AR over VR. . Meanwhile, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek says the company tends to “not use” the term metaverse. For us, it’s the next generation of storytelling. “

The Metaverse as a concept will be the next big thing in the Web3 ecosystem at the peak of the bull market, with Facebook rebranding itself to Meta to focus on becoming a leader in the nascent tech ecosystem. But Meta’s bet on the metaverse proved costly for the Fortune 500 company. The company said he posted losses of $3.67 billion in the third quarter of 2022, and those losses will be even more severe next year.