"As long as you have authority, people will believe you even if you lie." - Chekhov

In March this year, the US gaming platform Roblox went public under the banner of "Metaverse", and its market value exceeded 40 billion US dollars in one fell swoop, which attracted the attention of the entire market. Its rise was like a thunderclap, which ignited the concept of "Metaverse". Subsequently, Epic, Nvidia, and Facebook all set the Metaverse as their company's future development goal, and domestic giants such as Tencent and ByteDance also joined the game.

In the business market, there is probably nothing more authoritative than the flow of capital. As for whether the thing itself is right or not, that is not important. What is important is whether you have fooled more people to take over before the bubble.

As capital is rushing toward the Metaverse, companies that are not related to the Metaverse are flocking to this trend. In addition to familiar names such as ByteDance, Tencent, and iQiyi, there are even "tears of the times" such as Talking Tom (the IP was acquired by Zhejiang Jinke in 2017).

But behind the increasingly frenetic capital market, many users can’t help but ask: Is it really true that “everything can be the metaverse”?

Is cloud gaming just one step away from the Metaverse?

Influenced by film, television and animation works such as "Ready Player One" and "Sword Art Online", many people believe that games, VR and AR are the industries closest to the metaverse.

Some people also believe that the metaverse is a large-scale AR/VR online game.

This statement is not without reason. According to Roblox's definition, the metaverse should have eight elements: identity, friends, immersion, low latency, diversity, anywhere, economic system, and civilization. Today's games have basically achieved the first six points, and as for the last two points, games have not yet achieved them, but no other form has achieved them either.

The game forms most affected by the Metaverse may be VR and AR games. Around 2016, VR and AR were seen as the next hot spot in the technology industry.

Today, five years later, there are still only two VR games that are worth mentioning: Beat Saber and Half-Life: Alyx. Many head-mounted displays have become decorations in exhibition halls. The situation of AR games is not optimistic either. Although Pokémon GO, which exploded the world in 2016, is still popular today, its AR attributes have been greatly weakened, and more emphasis is placed on geographical coordinates.

Unexpectedly, after the rise of the metaverse concept that emphasizes immersion, the VR and AR markets seem to be "resurrecting from the dead".

At the end of August this year, ByteDance acquired VR equipment manufacturer Pico for 5 billion yuan, decisively entering the "metaverse" track. Tencent also followed suit and invested in Snap, a leading company in the AR field. At the same time, Facebook also launched a virtual office function on the other side of the ocean. People sitting at home in different places can feel like they are in a meeting room as usual after putting on VR headsets.

According to statistics, between 2016 and 2020, global VR headset shipments increased from 1.8 million to 6.7 million units, and VR headset shipments increased from 200,000 to 400,000 units. In 2021, these two figures are expected to reach 9.8 million and 700,000, and by 2022, the market is likely to double again.

IDC also predicts that the growth rate of VR/AR terminal shipments will be about 86% during the five years from 2020 to 2024, with VR and AR growing at 56% and 188% respectively. This year is expected to be a key year for a significant increase in the number of VR/AR terminals.

Cloud gaming has been popular longer than the Metaverse, but the emergence of the latter has raised the popularity of the former to a new level.

The logic is not difficult to understand. Today, the situation of cloud gaming is actually a bit awkward. Although many manufacturers focus on promoting "playing 3A games on mobile phones", in fact, the overlap between mobile game players and 3A game players is not high, or in other words, people who want to play 3A games do not regard mobile phones as an ideal gaming platform. Therefore, TV is regarded as the biggest potential entrance to cloud gaming.

TV can provide better audio and video experience and stronger immersion, so it is naturally the perfect partner for cloud gaming.

From the user's perspective, console players are indeed a group with a strong willingness and ability to pay, but for these people, years of experience and habits cannot be abandoned just like that.

In other words, in order to attract more players from consoles, cloud games need to prove that "there are some things only I can do." The Metaverse fits this point exactly: for the Metaverse, the most important thing is the richness of the content, and the richer the content, the higher the dependence on computing power. One reality is that even if the most advanced personal computing terminals are stacked together, it is hard to imagine that it can render a world as bizarre as "Ready Player One." However, if all the computing power is put into the cloud to solve, not to say that this vision can be realized immediately, but at least it is a big step forward and can solve half of the "bizarre".

At the same time, the development pace of cloud gaming and the metaverse is highly consistent: among the "eight elements" of the metaverse, in addition to economy and civilization, latency is still obviously insufficient, which is also a major hurdle that cloud gaming currently faces. Therefore, cloud gaming is also generally regarded as the first stop of the metaverse.

It seems that the Metaverse has revitalized the half-dead AR/VR and added fuel to the booming cloud games. It may really be as all-encompassing as the "universe".

The wind is blowing, but not all pigs can fly

The popularity of the metaverse is most directly reflected in the stock market.

On September 8 this year, many Metaverse concept stocks saw a sharp rise, including Zhongqingbao, Baotong Technology, Digital Video, Shunwang Technology, and many other stocks that recorded a 20CM daily limit. But what caught investors off guard was that just one day later, many related companies announced that their shareholders had completed their share reductions, and many stocks also plummeted.

On September 9, Baotong Technology closed down 13.65%, Digital Video closed down 8.93%, and many other related concept stocks also experienced a roller coaster ride in stock prices.

In response, some investors said: "Before we figured out what the Metaverse is, it has already collapsed."

Among these stocks, the most noteworthy one is Tom Cat mentioned above. On September 8, the company stated on the investor interaction platform: "The company's existing products have a huge user base and have a user base for the development of metaverse products. At the same time, the company is also actively exploring the technical reserves for the development of metaverse products. In addition, the company is firmly optimistic about the development direction of the metaverse and has established a special working group in the direction of the metaverse to coordinate domestic and foreign R&D teams to carry out concept development and project establishment for specific categories of products." On the same day, Tom Cat's stock price achieved a 20CM daily limit.

However, on the evening of September 8, Tom Cat received an inquiry letter from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, asking it to explain whether the company had used interactive replies to catch the attention of others, hype concepts, and cooperate with shareholders in reducing their holdings.

After that, the media investigated the "Zhejiang Jinke Tom Cat Cultural Industry Co., Ltd." behind Tom Cat and found that the company had changed its name three times within six years of listing. Before it went public in 2015, it had been focusing on the oxygen-based bleaching functional raw material business. From chemical industry to Internet entertainment and then to games, this span is not small. In addition, the former chairman of Zhejiang Jinke was also investigated for suspected insider trading. All these facts put together make it difficult for the outside world not to have some doubts about the intentions of "Zhejiang Jinke".

Let’s think back to the two unrealized elements of the metaverse: “civilization” and “economy.” When combined with words like “Internet,” “capital,” and “concept,” it’s easy to think of a hot word in the past two years: “cutting leeks.”

Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, said that from the perspective of the current development of the entire market, although the "metaverse" is the direction of future development, it is only a direction. Many things in the "metaverse" remain at the conceptual level. If the market continues to speculate on the concept of the "metaverse", it will undoubtedly be a huge risk and bubble. While being optimistic about the development of the "metaverse", we must also be wary of the risks brought by short-term speculation.

Let’s take a look back at the concepts that are closely tied to the Metaverse.

The resolution and dizziness issues of VR headsets have not been completely resolved so far, and AR headsets have not yet encountered suitable usage scenarios, not to mention the far-from-popular prices of the two.

To be frank, Roblox, the "first stock in the Metaverse," is not even a game. It is more like a platform for programming education for teenagers. Its degree of freedom is far inferior to "Minecraft," which is often compared to it.

Epic is also a pioneer in promoting the Metaverse, and its online concert in Fortnite has indeed shocked many players. However, it is not very interactive and lasts only a dozen minutes, which is still a long way from the ideal Metaverse.

In China, Zhongqingbao, whose stock price soared in September, also issued a statement saying: "The Metaverse is a huge concept and model. The company is in the initial exploration stage, and the concepts it touches on are relatively shallow. The corresponding products are still under development. At present, the launch time and region of new games are affected by many factors and there is also uncertainty."

Let’s talk about Tom Cat, who was named. In their response to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, they said: “The Metaverse is a very grand and distant vision. The company’s current game products are very far from the Metaverse. There is great uncertainty in the company’s product development and implementation, and it will not make a significant contribution to the company’s benefits in the short term.”

It can be said that if you dig deep, many so-called "metaverse companies" are actually not worthy of the name, and they are still doing the same business as before. The reason why they are desperately promoting the "metaverse" is more like using vague religious concepts to harvest believers.

But some people remain calm about this trend.

Today, the practical application of AR technology is still very limited, but there is one company that has always been optimistic about it, and that is Apple. In 2020, Apple added lidar to the iPad Pro and iPhone 12 Pro series to enhance the AR scanning capabilities of the products. This year, they also invested $410 million in their lidar supplier. It can be said that Apple is very persistent about AR.

Recently, Apple CEO Cook also talked about his vision for AR in an interview with Time magazine. When the reporter asked if this was the metaverse, Cook firmly said: "No, we just call it AR."

The story of the Metaverse has just begun, and it has come to an end. In the long run, this may be a good thing, a good thing for everyone.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.