The hype around the metaverse may have cooled, but immersive virtual experiences remain in the early stages with consumers. For brands and merchants, metaverse platforms are worth following as opportunities in these new economies unfold.
Here is a guide to promising virtual worlds for merchants and brands to explore in the year ahead. Some are accessible through virtual reality headsets; others offer social and gaming platforms with virtual lands and digital currencies. All are immersive, drawing consumers into a new realm.
Roblox
Roblox is an immersive platform for creating, playing, and connecting through experiences built by a community of creators. It claims nearly 80 million daily users. Recent platform improvements include an expanded marketplace with dynamic pricing, subscriptions within experiences, a rights manager, video ads, and an enhanced ads manager.
Roblox has also made the most progress in developing ecommerce initiatives with brands and merchants. Recently, Ikea opened a store on Roblox and created The Co-Worker Game to promote it and find employees to staff it. Walmart has launched ecommerce experiences within its Discovered world, allowing users to try out virtual items on their avatars and then purchase through a virtual laptop to access Walmart.com. Shopify is integrating its Checkout solution into Roblox, with a larger launch in early 2025. Developers, creators, and brands on Shopify can sell physical items directly within their Roblox games without leaving that platform.
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Meta Horizon Worlds
Meta Horizon Worlds is an immersive social experience for exploring, playing, and creating. A Meta product where users can log in with their Facebook accounts, Horizon Worlds is accessible via Meta Quest VR headsets in all 23 countries where those headsets are sold and supported by Meta.
Meta continues to develop the platform. Last year, the company released a series of quality VR games. This summer, Horizon Worlds hosted a concert with Sabrina Carpenter. Meta has tested mixed reality in Horizon Worlds (with plans to make it more widely available).
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Microsoft Mesh
Microsoft Mesh
Microsoft Mesh is an immersive three-dimensional environment for people to collaborate using Microsoft Teams, a PC, or a Meta headset. Mesh helps users feel that virtual meetings and events are more like face-to-face connections, with or without a headset. The 3D environments are also customizable, with games such as tossing bean bags and icebreaker questions.
Earlier this year Mesh launched its 3D meetings inside Teams. Mesh event hosts can now see attendees’ raised hands and reactions in all rooms across multi-room events (i.e., events exceeding 16 attendees.)
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The Sandbox
The Sandbox
The Sandbox, launched as a 2D-pixel art game in 2012, is now a 3D environment for world-building games to empower global artists, storytellers, and designers to create, publish, own, and monetize unique content via blockchain technology. Virtual concerts, art exhibitions, and conferences can be attended from anywhere, featuring artists such as Snoop Dogg, DeadMau5, Blondish, and Elvis in The Sandbox. Brands such as Gucci and Adidas are hosting immersive shopping experiences in The Sandbox, with virtual fashion shows, showrooms, and stores. The Sandbox states it has partnered with and assisted more than 200 brands to develop their own worlds.
The Sandbox recently launched its Alpha Season 4. The 10-week in-platform event features over 100 unique experiences, 50 hours of new gameplay, and collaborations with 40 brands alongside user-generated content. Additionally, The Sandbox is offering a reward pool exceeding $2.5 million in value, paid out in Sand, the platform’s native token.
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Decentraland
Decentraland
Decentraland is a virtual 3D world where users buy virtual plots of land as non-fungible tokens using the Mana cryptocurrency, which is based on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can also create and sell wearables. Digital fashion shows, competitions, and themed events are key social activities. Established brands and fashion labels, including Samsung, Adidas, Miller Lite, Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, and Perry Ellis, have purchased properties or participated.
Decentraland’s upgraded desktop client enters public beta on October 22 with enhancements to its graphics and performance, resulting in faster frame rates and reduced loading times for the virtual world. The upgrade will allow greater avatar density, allowing over 200 avatars in the same place, enhancing the social aspect of the world. The platform also plans to introduce features such as quests and badges to track player progress and promote social engagement. The platform will host a three-day music festival in November to test its new capabilities.
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Fortnite
Fortnite
Fortnite, launched in 2017, is a metaverse platform developed by Epic Games. It supports six game modes: Battle Royale, Save the World, Lego Fortnite, Fortnite Creative, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival. All modes are cross-platform compatible, requiring an Epic Games account to save between platforms. In addition, the modes utilize the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, allowing players to edit worlds using Fortnite assets.
Fortnite has hosted a series of successful collaborations with brands and artists, including Lego, Marvel, the NFL, Eminem, and Travis Scott. Earlier this year, Disney announced a multiyear project with Epic Games to build a games and entertainment universe of Disney stories and experiences, along with Disney’s $1.5 billion investment for an equity stake in the developer. The new universe will offer many opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop, and engage with content, characters, and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, and more. Players, gamers, and fans can create their own stories and experiences, express their fandom, and share content.
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Somnium Space
Somnium Space
Somnium Space is an open-source virtual reality world running on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can discover and purchase land parcels on the main or parallel worlds to build and create a business office, an art gallery, an event hall, a place to socialize, a virtual portfolio to display work, and more. Accessible from VR, PC, and the web, Somnium Space is an alternate reality to connect with friends, customers, and even fans.
Somnium Space recently began taking orders for its next-generation VR headset, Somnium VR1, which claims the widest undistorted field view of any consumer headset. Somnium Space is also testing a Live Forever Mode to immortalize individuals through AI-powered avatars that replicate voice, mannerisms, and movement with just 30 minutes of observation. The mode is intended to enable interactions with mirrored avatars of deceased loved ones.
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The Readyverse
The Readyverse
The Readyverse is a pending interactive digital world that will bring the Ready Player One movie and fiction series franchise to the metaverse in Web3 (i.e., a decentralized web). The project is from the metaverse-focused Readyverse Studios in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery. Additional brands and franchises joining The Readyverse will launch in late 2024.
Readyverse Studio recently launched Promptopia, combining multiplayer gameplay with real-time AI asset generation. It allows users to build, share, and play in a world shaped by their own ideas, built inside the Readyverse.
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Nvidia Omniverse
Nvidia Omniverse is a platform of APIs, SDKs, and services that enable developers to integrate Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) and RTX rendering technologies (variable shading and textures), powering 3D product configurators to enhance customers’ shopping experiences. Earlier this year, Nvidia debuted a new omniverse-based workflow integrated with Apple Vision Pro, displaying Nvidia’s RTX cloud renderings in real-time, blending 3D photorealistic environments with the physical world.
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My Happy Place: Bandwagon and McDonald’s Singapore
Bandwagon Labs, the tech division of Asia-based media company Bandwagon, partnered with McDonald’s Singapore to launch My Happy Place. This in-app experience uses Bw.land, Bandwagon’s lightweight metaverse with Web3 capabilities. McDonald’s world combines virtual entertainment through Build-A-Burger and Wheel Of Deals with tangible rewards, enabling users to redeem real-life deals and prizes. The partnership enables McDonald’s to have full control over its virtual environment. Users can access the McDonald’s app without signing in with their digital wallet. The launch follows last year’s collaboration, launching 2,000 Grimace NFTs as limited edition collectibles.
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