How Metaverse is the most important megatrend of 2022

Metaverse is expected to be the new era of the spatial or “embodied” Internet.

Until a year ago, Metaverse was a word unknown to many. It was not until April 2021 that Metaverse began to raise its head to the general public. Bitcoin had reached its all-time high of $ 63,000, the ‘hype’ around cryptocurrencies was high, and Metaverse was introduced to an uninitiated investor as a return equated to cryptocurrencies. The unknownness of Metaverse is well illustrated by the fact that in our first article on the subject, we translated the word Metaverse into a “virtual world”.

Quickly during 2021, Metaverse began clearing space in the market as one technology giant after another said it was investing heavily in metaverse’s innovative virtual and augmented reality technologies.

The most significant alarm clock for investors since the start of the Metaverse boom was in October, when Facebook, one of the world’s largest companies in terms of market capitalization, officially changed its name to Meta Platforms.

According to the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with the name change, the company will focus on developing its own metaverse. Over the next decade, Zuckerberg said up to a billion people will interact, work and create products and content for the metaverse.

What is Metaverse?

The term “Metaverse” was coined in 1992 by Neal Stephenson in his science novel “Snow Crash”. The term consists of the prefix “meta” meaning ‘over’ or ‘beyond’ and the remainder ‘verse’ derived from the universe. The film “Ready, Player One” (2018) offers Steven Spielberg’s insight into what Metaverse might look like in the future.

All in all, Metaverse can be seen as an immersive virtual 3D world featuring interactive and collaborative spaces. These provide people with different experiences through virtual and augmented reality technologies. Many large technology companies have already expressed the view that metaverse could not become a single company product. Creating and deploying a real-world virtual copy on a large scale would require the interoperability of different enterprise technologies with hardware, software platforms, applications, interconnected virtual 3D spaces, and digital objects. People’s avatars, which are expected to move smoothly between different virtual modes, also bring their own challenges.

At the core of Metaverse are virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. The difference between VR and AR can be described by different effects on vision and perception. VR technologies “replace” our vision with special VR glasses, while AR technologies increase people’s vision and add new images to our environment. Remember Pokemon Go? Projecting a Pokemon on the screen is an example of augmented reality. Metaverse elements have also been implemented in Fortnite - Battle Royale, Roblox, and Minecraft games, for example.

Microsoft's Activation Blizzard acquisition confirmed metaverse's position as the most important megatrend of the year

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022, many investors got their eyes rubbed when Microsoft, one of the world’s largest companies, announced the acquisition of gaming company Activision Blizzard. The acquisition was agreed to be a cash transaction, with a whopping $ 68.7 billion.

Microsoft estimates that the transaction will be completed in the fiscal year 2023. If completed, the acquisition would be the largest in Microsoft and the entire gaming industry, and according to Reuters, the world's largest cash transaction. With the announcement,

Activision-Blizzard’s share rose 25% in the secondary market but is still below the purchase price of $ 95 per share.

By acquiring one of the world's most successful gaming companies, Microsoft intends to further develop its own Metaverse technology in the competition, e.g. Against Meta (formerly Facebook). Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella commented on the announcement that gaming will be the most dynamic and exciting entertainment category and will play a big part in the development of various Metaverse platforms. According to CNBC, Nadella is the first of the leaders in large technology companies to recognize the potential of the metaverse.

Indeed, Microsoft has expanded aggressively in the gaming industry over the past decade. In 2014, the company acquired Mojang, the maker of the Minecraft game, and last year, Microsoft also acquired the successful gaming studio Bethesda.

The potential market value of Metaverse

Investors have a lot of opportunities to reap the returns from this huge megatrend. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, Metaverse’s market size could reach $ 800 billion by 2024. Some analysts believe that given the large change impact of the metaverse, it could become a multi-trillion dollar market. Specific hardware, software, digital avatars, and other non-exchangeable tokens (NFTs), cryptocurrencies, and cryptographic networks are the components that enable the introduction of metaverse to large markets.

Major Metaverse shares

As can be seen from this year’s acquisitions, and comment from Microsoft’s CEO, gaming companies have also grown in importance in the evolution of the Metaverse megatrend. We listed the most important Metaverse stocks.

MICROSOFT (NASDAQ: MSFT)

Microsoft * is one of the strongest players in the Metaverse industry. Microsoft has previously announced that the company is in a “unique position” in this area and offers a set of artificial intelligence and mixed-reality tools to help companies develop Metaverse applications. Microsoft has also taken the next-generation holographic headset for Metaverse hardware - HoloLens 2, to take learning and productivity to new heights.