Facebook Metaverse is probably one of the most popular virtual reality companies. Since they are at the forefront of the industry, their successes and failures are also in the limelight. Since Mark Zuckerberg revealed the idea of building a virtual world, it has been tilting towards losses rather than profits.
Many have called their pioneer VR headset Horizon substandard, and the lack of users is another problem the company faces in the metaverse.
Since the metaverse and the technology behind it are closely related to the crypto industry, the industry's failures affect the crypto industry directly or indirectly. Like the failures of prominent companies such as FTX and Genesis, Facebook's metaverse failures have affected the crypto industry severely.
Continue reading as we will discuss how the failures of the Facebook metaverse adversely impact the crypto industry.
What is the Metaverse?
The metaverse is simply a virtual world that consists of an integration of 3D virtual technologies. The metaverse combines virtual and augmented reality to create a digital world.
These 3D digital worlds are controlled using virtual reality headsets, eye movements, voice commands, and controllers. Inside the metaverse, users will find themselves in a virtual environment that feels real using a simulation.
It is worth noting that a metaverse can easily exist without blockchain technology, but developers of different metaverse services have been trying to integrate both technologies. For those who have integrated blockchain technology with the metaverse, it helps for the easy interaction between both technologies.
Integrating the metaverse with blockchain technology has created a link to crypto worlds, enabling more projects to be created for the community. Several metaverse platforms have created their own NFTs and tokens, which reward users for participation.
Because of the new correlation between the metaverse and the crypto industry, the failures of several metaverse companies have been affecting the crypto market. Its NFT and crypto tokens are also affected whenever a metaverse project suffers a setback. This same thing is happening now with the drastic failure of Facebook (now Meta) with their virtual world projects. They have suffered losses worth millions of dollars, causing other metaverse crypto projects to be affected.
Facebook Metaverse Failures
Despite the hype surrounding the metaverse when people learned about it, many things are going wrong for metaverse companies. Looking at the revenue generated in 2021 and 2022, one can see that many things have gone wrong in the industry. The metaverse world went from making $18.9bn across 311 deals in 2021 to just $5bn across 283 in 2022.
While many might argue that the metaverse is still in its early stages of development, one needs to look at the adoption rate of the emerging technology. Meta being at the forefront of the metaverse, will be used to analyze the failures the metaverse is experiencing.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the brain behind most of the moves that are happening within the virtual world. Despite the billionaire's criticism, he believes the metaverse will be part of the future.
There's a truth that the metaverse will become part of the future at some point. But at what cost?
Horizon Worlds was the first project that Meta launched to consolidate their place in the virtual world. This flagship project was created so that users can explore and marvel at the wonder of the metaverse. However, Mark Zuckerberg and his team have a very serious problem. Nobody has been exploring the virtual world they spent billions of dollars building.
In fact, other metaverse companies with lower financial capacity are attracting more users to their platforms than Facebook. Decentraland and The Sandbox have 38 and 522 daily active users, respectively; they are much higher than the daily users Horizon Worlds records in a day. When their community size is also compared, The Sandbox and Decentraland have more community members who support their project than the Facebook metaverse.
The major reason why Mark Zuckerberg and his team are experiencing such losses is that users complain most of their products are substandard. In addition to the substandard products, many have complained of their VR products being outright overpriced. Their Horizon Worlds VR headset is priced at an outrageous $1,500.
Apart from their VR headsets and physical products, their virtual world is also said to be poor with its graphics. Many have compared the graphics in their metaverse to games produced in the 1990s. In addition, Mark Zuckerberg has been mocked for creating a metaverse whose occupants have no legs. It has been reported that even Meta employees already have doubts about the project's success. But they can't do anything as Mark Zuckerberg makes the final decision for the project.
Being hot-headed over a failing project comes at a cost; Meta, which was once a once-trillion-dollar is now worth less than $300 billion, and it has been involved in a massive layoff of more than 11,000 employees. While the effect of the Meta virtual world project might be hitting hard at the company itself, it has also been affecting the crypto industry severely.
How Facebook's Metaverse Failure Affects the Crypto Industry
The crypto industry witnessed one of the most depressing and worst markets in a long while. Many events were a major factor in the industry's bad outlook in 2022. The FTX collapse, the degradation of TerraUSD, and Genesis's bankruptcy complicated many things in the crypto industry.
However, internal issues within the crypto industry aren't the only thing causing havoc. Metaverse projects without positive outcomes, such as that of Facebook, have been affecting the crypto market.
Since many metaverse developers are interlinking the technology with blockchain technology, the failures of metaverse companies such as Facebook will seriously affect crypto. Facebook's crypto/metaverse involvement is not helping either, as all their projects have been ending in negative outcomes.
The first impact on the crypto industry is that it reduces people's trust in projects integrated with the crypto industry. When a metaverse project fails, some people feel that their integration with the crypto industry caused the failure.
Many tokens related to many metaverse companies have dipped whenever there's news about the failure of another metaverse project. On the investor's side, many have lost millions of dollars due to the failure of many metaverse projects. Investors who invested their money into the Facebook metaverse project are currently in losses and thus might make a lot of them avoid other projects related to blockchain technology.