Microsoft bought Blizzard with 436.4 billion! Inventory of those most doubled potential meta-universe track platform

Entering 2022, metaverse-related topics continue to ferment, and the concept is quite sought after by the market. On the evening of January 18, Microsoft announced the acquisition of game development company Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, equivalent to about RMB 436.4 billion. It is reported that this will be the largest acquisition in the history of Microsoft.

It is important to know that in fiscal year 2021, Microsoft’s net profit was $61.271 billion, meaning that it took more than a year of net profit to take Blizzard. And not long after the last byte jump to 9 billion mergers and acquisitions bird look, this time the meta-universe track again staged the century big acquisition, I have to say that the meta-universe really fire. Acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft came up with such a big deal, that is because Activision Blizzard is the world’s largest game developer and publisher, its games including “Call of Duty”, “Warcraft”, “Diablo” and other world-class well-known IP and products.

Microsoft Corp. said the acquisition will be completed in 2023, and the transaction will help accelerate the growth of the company’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud, while providing the building blocks for the meta-universe. By the time the deal is completed in 2023, Microsoft will be the third largest gaming company in the world in terms of revenue after Tencent and Sony. Industry insiders point out that the global giant companies continue to layout the meta-universe, there are through the game business layout of the meta-universe, not long ago the domestic Tencent also just finished acquiring the game phone manufacturer Black Shark.

There is no doubt that Microsoft’s acquisition this time made a good start for the meta-universe in 2022, and in addition to the game industry, AR/VR is another investment main line that is favored by many institutions. In order to create a “sense of reality” comparable to the real world, the metaverse needs to focus not only on the human body’s “five senses” (sight, hearing, taste, touch, and feel), but also to create a sense of reality in the environment and the social structure of reality. This requires different cutting-edge technologies behind the support, involving VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) technology, as well as big data, transmission technology, edge computing, cloud computing, graphics computing, AI (artificial intelligence) and so on.

However, virtual reality and augmented reality technologies have become two major and promising technologies in terms of enhancing user experience. Considering the importance of AR and VR, it is not surprising that their international markets are bound to see tremendous growth. Many tech giants have already laid out first in order to be one step ahead in the metaverse development field. Among them, the dynamics of technology companies in China and the United States are most noteworthy. Today, let’s take a look at the metaverse track platforms that have the most potential to double, let’s take a look together!

The metaverse boom started in October 2021 when Zuckerberg renamed Facebook Meta and announced the building of a “metaverse” ecosystem. Meta, Microsoft, Apple and others are at the front of the meta-universe wave. Overseas, Meta (FB.US) is a representative of the technology giants that have fully embraced the metaverse by laying out the metaverse and actively leading the establishment of the metaverse rule system after its name change. Wearable device XR (i.e. AR/VR) may become the first brick for Meta to enter the metaverse field. As early as 2014, Meta acquired VR company Oculus for $2 billion and continued to make efforts in the VR field, and announced the establishment of XR program and research fund to explore the establishment of metaverse ecological rules in September 21.

Microsoft (MSFT.US) has also been making a lot of moves in the metaverse, proposing an “enterprise metaverse” solution at the Global Partner Conference 2021, aiming to integrate the digital and physical worlds. At the Ignite 2021 technology conference, it launched Mesh for Teams and 365 Connected Spaces for online meetings and enterprise data management from an office application scenario, and Microsoft will also work on a fully immersive metaverse game series through the Xbox platform.

Apple (AAPL.US) has also been frequently laying out AR/VR technology, and Cook has said that metaverse is more like another name for AR. According to the aggregated news, Apple has acquired ten AR/VR companies one after another in the last decade, and although Apple has not launched any related hardware, the related fields have been actively laid out, and Apple’s first AR/VR headset will enter the market next year. Consumer-grade “Apple Glasses” are expected to be put into mass production and marketed. Apple’s layout of lightweight AR devices is expected to pry the AR industry and complement and even subvert the smartphone.

Tencent Holdings, WIMI, and Byte Jump are the first-line players in the domestic metaverse. At present, Tencent (TCEHY.US) has become a pioneer in the domestic metaverse field by relying on its advantages in the game field. Tencent Tianmei Studio’s social+game metaverse project “ZPLAN” has been revealed, which may become a key part of Tencent’s super digital scene for games. Tencent has also invested in game engine companies such as Roblox and Epic, while Tencent is laying out its metaverse in multiple fields around its own social platform and content ecology, and is moving towards a “true Internet” based on games and social media.

WIMI (WIMI.US) is also an active player in the metaverse field, focusing on the layout of AI and AR, including the construction of a holographic cloud platform and the improvement of hardware and software content, and making a number of metaverse-related investments. The company intends to develop a social virtual IP project in AR environment, using AR hardware, the core equipment of metaverse, as the entrance, to restore the reality structure to the parallel digital world through holographic projection, VR, AR, 5G and other core technologies of metaverse, and provide users with “full immersion, low latency, strong interactive” interactive digital entertainment experience. experience. This has the same properties as the basic logic of the metaverse of integration between reality and reality and the immersion and experience embodied in the metaverse, following the metaverse application settings.

The company invested in the “Chinese version of Roblox” Code Qiankun, developed and launched the virtual social product Pixsoul, and acquired Pico, the first VR company in China in terms of game market share, in 2011, to start a strong layout of the hardware track. After the acquisition of Pico by Byte Jump is expected to rely on capital, content and operational advantages to accelerate the VR equipment out of the circle. At this stage, the domestic consumer VR application scene is mostly offline VR experience hall, and the content is mainly self-researched stand-alone games by businessmen.

In addition to the above large technology companies, Roblox (RBLX.US), a game company, went public on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2011, becoming the first company to include “meta-universe” in its prospectus, taking the shape of a meta-universe. NetEase (NTES.US) is also actively grabbing the track and making metaverse-related layout. From the layout of the above technology companies, we can find that the layout of Chinese and American Internet companies in the field of metaverse has its own focus, with layouts in the underlying technology and infrastructure of metaverse, hardware devices and platforms, as well as the content side of the scene.

If the reason why metaverse is so hot, on the one hand, technology companies are promoting it, some of them are motivated by the development of science and technology, on the other hand, some people are just fascinated by science itself and can’t live without the public’s “show”, just like it will mobilize ordinary people to participate in VR games. What is the metaverse in the layout of generalization? If you want to know a result, you still need to look back.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)