The gaming industry revenue is now dwarfing the revenue that major motion pictures are making. From a couple of hundred million gamers 10 years ago to now it’s almost 3 billion gaming users in the world.
Microsoft purchased Activision for $68 billion dollars.
Sony is buying Bungie for about $4 billion dollars.
What the heck is going on? Why are these companies making such big bets on gaming outfits?
I believe Gamers will be the ones calling the shots in the 2030s and beyond. Just like nerds made their mark on the world and became cool in the 1980s and ’90s.
Keep in mind that when I say gamers I don’t mean the teenage kid sitting on the couch eating cheetos and playing xbox.
Gaming is much more than just Madden football, Halo or Pac-Man.
Gaming is experiences you have together with friends, family and even coworkers.
Let me give you an example. Imagine going to axe throwing but doing it virtually in the metaverse where you have walked in with a bunch of friends into this store in metaverse but your friends are actually physically located all over the world. One is from China, another from India, third from Germany and one from Canada and you are from United States. You can be with each other virtually, throw the axe at the targets, banter among yourselvee just like you would do at the actual axe throwing place. In fact, everything about the experience is normal just like you were doing it if physically present with each other.
Or to simplify it, just chilling at home and watching a Sunday football playoff game virtually with a dozen of your friends from around the world. That’s gaming as well.
Currently I see Meta (formerly Facebook), Microsoft, Sony and a few other players making some big bets in the gaming industry. They see the vision. They see the future. It’s true that recently the revenues of many of these companies have taken a hit but that’s only temporary in my opinion.
My prediction is that other companies will start seeing the same vision as well once they see the realization of benefits and profits that these companies will be accruing.
It’s a wonderful future to look forward to where you can be anywhere and be anyone in the metaverse.
Of course, this wonderful future does not come with drawbacks and challenges that we will have to face just like any other advances in technology that have come before it in the past.
My biggest fear: I hope we don’t all become couch potatoes where we wake up in the morning, put on our virtual reality gear, spend the whole day in a virtual world that that gives us whatever reality we want, momentarily satisfying us for the day and then we turn in for the night to repeat the same thing over again the next day (fourth reference, watch the movie “Ready Player One”). That future would not be good for mankind.
If we want to avail this upcoming opportunity of the metaverse in a way that propels mankind forward, we will have to be disciplined about how we make the best use of the new world instead of becoming slaves to it.