The Metaverse in real estate : A scam or a new reality ?
“The metaverse will be the place where all forms of entertainment and media eventually converge, a gateway where they can be consumed”, Novaquark.
This description of the metaverse seems to be the most widely accepted one for many people. In fact, the concept of a metaverse is a few decades old and like many things it finds its origins particularly in parallel worlds despite the fact that some believe there may have been earlier references. Over the last few years, however, the term has been increasingly used by tech giants. The only real issue here is that no one can really agree on what the word actually means or even if it exists. What we can presume is that metaverse is an evolution of technology or perhaps a new way to use it.
To understand the Metaverse, Look to Video Games …
The metaverse is related to the virtual world and takes a good part of the video games arena yet not everyone feels that the concept of a metaverse is purely limited to it. A metaverse allows participants to customize their avatars to their preferences and interact with each other in imaginative ways. Which allow people to preview clothes, create virtual movie sets and even become a content or a product creator within that virtual world. With the likes on Facebook and many others focusing their future on this concept the immensity of a potential change shouldn’t be underestimated.
Why is everyone worried about the Metaverse?
To get a broader read on what the metaverse really means we asked Quentin La Carbona, the CEO of Pristimantis, a French startup specialized in augmented and virtual reality, a simple two-part question–What do you think about metaverse, and how will it be used? His answers provide a clearer picture on how the metaverse can be used to avoid an excessive use of it.
“I don’t feel anything good about it. It didn’t work once and I don’t think it will work again. Even though the VR headsets on the market today are better than ever and even more are upcoming. I don’t think that the metaverse is something that’s going to take off in particular, but in my opinion, the fact that we’re trying to push everyone to get a headset and spend time with this type of equipment in virtual worlds, doesn’t seem desirable. It’s true that you can achieve something only in real life. Your virtual reality climb of Mt Everest for example may be realistic, but you cannot get the satisfaction that you would get from the actual climb.”
So, what can we do about it ?
When we asked him about how might the risks of a metaverse be mitigated, he said : “These technologies must remain tools that can help solve a lot of problems, it can promote training for example. As tools, they are very powerful and very interesting. From my point of view, they must progress as tools not as consumer items that are sold to make a profit.”
Millions of dollars for virtual lands in the Metaverse…
It is no secret the real estate market is skyrocketing and the dream of owning a home became increasingly out of reach. In fact, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is being felt in global real estate markets, with commercial real estate investment volumes falling across but the Covid pandemic is creating another little-known land rush. Indeed, some brands are paying millions of dollars for plots of land that do not physically exist on Earth. Indeed, it is located online, in a virtual world that tech insiders have named the metaverse. Prices for plots have increased in the last few months ever since Facebook announced it was going all-in on virtual reality.
In the interview, Quentin La Carbona claims that the metaverse in real estate makes no sense. “ I don’t see the point of a brand putting millions of dollars into these systems. I don’t see at what point it would be more useful than to be a well-known brand already established with good communication and good marketing in real life. I don’t understand in which way the metaverse will have an added value. Maybe brands are trying to seduce a clientele that will find this more fun, but is the niche they are going to address fundamentally going to allow them to justify the funds and budgets they will have put into the metaverse ?”
Salma Zanbour, young 24-year-old sales manager assistant at Lesaffre and a big fan of video games, talked to us about her opinion on the metaverse in real estate.
So what does the future hold for Metaverse ?
#Metaverse #RealEstate #VirtualReality #VRheadsets
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About the author: You can find out more about Hind LOUGHLIMI on her LinkedIn profile and you can also follow her on Twitter,
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
