Chinanews.com, February 22 (Chinanews Finance and Economics reporter Wu Tao) "The waves behind the Yangtze River push forward the waves ahead, and ChatGPT photographed the Yuan Universe on the beach." While ChatGPT became popular in the circle, the "upstart" Yuan Universe has become lonely in recent years.
"Facebook parent company Meta is preparing for a new round of layoffs" "Tencent announced the official disbandment of the XR (Mixed Reality) team" "Microsoft began laying off employees in Surface devices, mixed reality hardware (MR) HoloLens and Xbox departments" "ByteDance's Big layoffs in the PICO business"... Various rumors spread frequently, and the Metaverse has fallen from the wind?
Tencent, PICO and other companies responded
Relevant Tencent staff responded to Sinonews Finance and Economics that the disbandment report was not true, and the actual situation was to change the hardware development path, and the relevant business team adjusted.
It is understood that Tencent will provide affected employees with a 2-month transition period, and give priority to job transfer interviews and external recommendation opportunities.
The relevant person in charge of PICO told Zhongxin Finance and Economics that the information about the "big layoffs" is not true.
PICO has indeed carried out a round of organizational optimization recently, but the overall proportion is not high.
Moreover, this adjustment only involves part of the business, which belongs to the company's normal organizational structure adjustment and will not affect the normal operation of the business.
Regarding the aggressive "adjustment" of the Metaverse industry, Shen Yang, a professor at the School of Journalism at Tsinghua University and director of the Metaverse Culture Laboratory, analyzed in an interview with Zhongxin Finance that due to the impact of the global economic environment, layoffs are an industry phenomenon, and there is no company that does not lay off employees.
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology at the end of 2022, according to incomplete statistics, there are more than 10,000 companies related to virtual reality in my country.
In 2021, the scale of investment and financing in the field of virtual reality in my country will increase by more than 100%.
Data map.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Yin Liqin
Why is the Metaverse not so "fragrant"?
Yuan Universe was obviously still a "popular person" last year, so why has it plummeted in the eyes of technology giants this year?
Shen Yang pointed out that after the recent revolutionary breakthrough of ChatGPT, everyone discovered that the AI sector can be realized more quickly, so some adjustments have to be made. This is also one of the reasons why technology giants have recently adjusted the Metaverse business sector.
Some analysts pointed out that Metaverse-related hardware shipments fell short of expectations and continued business losses were also important reasons.
Meta's 2022 financial report shows that RealityLabs (Metaverse Reality Laboratory) will have a total loss of US$13.717 billion in 2022, an increase of 34.57% from the loss in 2021, of which the loss in the fourth quarter was US$4.279 billion.
The relevant person in charge of Meta said in the company's fourth quarter earnings conference call in 2022 that regarding RealityLabs (Metaverse Reality Laboratory), losses are expected to increase in 2023.
In China, news related to Tencent’s Metaverse has appeared on Weibo’s hot searches several times. After the release of the beta version of Tencent’s 3D Super QQ Show labeled Metaverse, although a 3D version of “Xiaowo” was added, it did not resonate with netizens. .
Some netizens said, "The biggest difference from the previous QQ show is that the 2D flat version has become a 3D stereoscopic version."
In addition, in the second half of last year, PICO released the first product PICO4 after being merged into ByteDance, but as of today, its shipment volume has not been disclosed.
Screenshot of PICO official website.
According to a research report from Everbright Securities, the global VR headset shipments will exceed 10 million units in 2021; VR shipments are expected to exceed 18 million units in 2023.
However, "the penetration of VR equipment is lower than expected, and the growth of enterprise-related businesses will be affected."
Shen Yang believes that looking at a brand-new concept like the Metaverse requires a long-term perspective, and it requires continuous investment. The explosion of ChatGPT today is also the result of long-term investment.
Metaverse ushered in huge changes?
Although the tech giants have made some adjustments, some analysts pointed out that the future development of Metaverse can be expected, which is why the tech giants adjusted instead of cutting off the business entirely.
People close to Tencent revealed that Tencent has not given up exploring XR and will still consider other development directions.
On February 20, it was reported that the Tencent XR team will promote the introduction of Meta's Oculus Quest 2 (VR equipment) in the future, similar to Tencent's introduction of the Bank of China Switch.
"We are constantly adjusting the roadmap. Obviously, some of them are long-term things. So far, we have not seen any signal that we should change RealityLab's long-term strategy." The relevant person in charge of Meta said that he will continue to adjust the details and consider how implement.
Many companies are adjusting the metaverse business, but another source said that Apple, which has been developing headsets for 7 years, may launch its own headsets.
This may bring a huge change to the industry.
Regarding this, in Shenyang’s view, “If Apple, a company with top software and hardware integration, can’t make the user experience extreme and truly popular, then this sector will have to wait for several years of technological progress before it can be used in the market. The C-end has achieved very good large-scale popularization. On the contrary, this industry may usher in a wave of explosion.” (End)