MAIN FEATURE
$ 68,7 billion to build its metaverse . Occulus Quest was the number one app purchased on Apple ’ s iStore over the Christmas 2021 period . Apple prefers to stay away from the buzzword metaverse and prefers to stick to the generic term ‘ augmented reality ’ as they position themselves quietly in this space .
Other popular metaverse platforms and games include Unity , The Sandbox , Axie Infinity , Fortnite , Unreal Engine , Decentraland using crypto & NFT ’ s , Horizon Worlds , Somnium Space and Alt Space VR ( Microsoft ) to name a few .
How the Metaverse
fits into Marketing ? What does this new shiny form of marketing entail ? It is a shift from traditional towards experiential brand engagements with fully immersive experiences . It gives the opportunity to network , meet and connect on to one , to hundreds even thousands of people in a single server to extend human interactions in a virtual world using your avatar . It also allows people to work in an environment to create content , market , exhibit products and services , use as a training area or as a customer centre to shop where you can buy and sell goods , virtual land or transact with crypto , tokenised assets and NFT ’ s using digital wallets .
Metaverse Pioneers A number of major companies and brands experimenting with metaverse technology include Microsoft , Google , Snapchat , Tencent and Binance and big consumer brands that have pivoted into the metaverse to prepare for the next coming tech boom include Gucci , Disney , Adidas , Nike , Samsung and Sony .
South Africa ’ s metaverse and nonfungible tokens ( NFT ) market is expected to gain huge popularity this year , as more local companies experiment with immersive technologies to deliver operational and revenue improvements . South Africa has their own home grown commercially functional metaverse platform called Spatialweb which
20 FEB 2022 SA Real Estate Investor Magazine