The Race called Metaverse: Epic Games vs Facebook.
The next profound and significant revolution in the world of the internet is the metaverse. Several tech giants are making heads in it but Epic Games and Facebook are its top proponents.
Both tech giants have their own ideas about the metaverse and both are in the race. What to expect from them and who has it right? Let’s find out.
Metaverse is a term coined way back in 1992 by Neal Stephenson which surfaced in his novel Snow Crash. However, the term didn’t become a household one until a couple of years back.
The gaming and technology industries gave traction to the idea and started working on it. Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney saw a massive opportunity in it and became its top advocate. He defined meta-verse as “an evolution of how users interact with brands, intellectual properties, and each other on the Internet.”
He further adds, “It would be a kind of online playground where users could join friends to play a multiplayer game like Epic’s “Fortnite” one moment, watch a movie on Netflix the next, and then bring friends to test drive a new car that’s crafted exactly the same in the real world as it would be in the virtual.”
The idea behind his meta-verse is that there isn’t any concept of closed gardens, closed systems, barriers, and separate systems. Tech giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and games will have only one account that would let the user roam around anywhere in the metaverse.
On the contrary, Facebook wants a meta-verse of social networks with AR-enabled glasses. The integration of the real world and virtual world will let people attend virtual meetings between avatars in real-world spaces.
Meta-verse: Epic Games vs Facebook
However, the metaverse Mark Zuckerberg advocates is a closed one controlled by its engineers and admins. The idea behind Zuckerberg’s metaverse will require a Facebook account to access apps as well as the metaverse.
Bloomberg also shares its thoughts on Facebook’s metaverse, “The two critical components needed for companies to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise from any potential meta-verse are advanced semiconductors and software tools. Facebook is not strong on either front.”
Both Epic Games and Facebook are currently working on the idea of the meta-verse, but Facebook’s tunnel vision would most probably lead to a failure.
