Everyone is on the Metaverse craze. From Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the entire capital city of South Korea, the dystopian Metaverse future is coming. Despite so many competitors already vying for the top stop, Chinese tech giant Tencent is also planning on joining in.
Reported by TechCrunch, Tencent revealed plans to craft its own Metaverse during yesterday’s earnings call. However, the Chinese tech giant was seemingly more realistic about its plans than companies such as Facebook.
Tencent reveals pathways to The Metaverse
In the earnings call, Tencent’s CEO Pony Ma revealed that there are three “pathways” to creating its future Metaverse. The first is a fully gamified experience like Robox, the second is gamified social aspects. Finally, Tencent’s Metaverse could be reality infused with digital enhancements.
“Anything that makes the virtual world more real and the real world more rich with virtual experiences can become part of the metaverse,” Ma said.
Of course, with Tencent creating tech in a heavily censored area of the world with strict limits on social media and gaming, the tech company has to design around these limits. Ma believes that the company’s vision can succeed as Beijing isn't “fundamentally averse” to the technology. However, it will have to fall “under the regulatory framework” that all media is subjected to.
With China’s strict regulations against gaming and social media, one can only imagine how that will affect metaverse content. There will undoubtedly be restrictions, eventually, especially in its relation to children.
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The future is software-driven, and it’s far away
Despite being interested in creating its own Metaverse, Tencent isn't confident that the first generations will take off. Ma praised “social networks such as Meta itself and Snap” for having the resources to build a functional template. On the other hand, the CEO was not confident their versions will succeed.
Ma believes that a proper, functioning Metaverse will “probably take longer than people expected and would probably need a number of iterations”. Nevertheless, he believes that Tencent has the skills, capital and software to be successful in the future.
Additionally, Ma explained that hardware will probably be needed to build the Metaverse they want. However, that hardware isn't a “necessary” condition to succeed.
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