XRB WIRE : AR/VR/3D/Game/AI insights for decision makers- 41
In this week’s Edition:
Big Story : 199 million users of Roblox
3D : is the Growth Story of 2020-21
Immersive News : Audi, Apple, Microsoft & more
Big Story : 199 million young users of Roblox
“We will see a shift in the way people play, work, learn or simply hang out in 2021. Some of these connections will move into the Metaverse, a digital place where people seamlessly get together and interact in millions of 3D virtual experiences.”
This quote is from a certain Mr David Baszucki & there are two big reasons why you will take him seriously.
The first one is obvious, he just IPO-ed his company at a humongous $30 billion & that brings us to the second reason & primary cause for this blockbuster valuation.
As of November 2020 Roblox had 36.2 million daily active users worldwide & 199 Million monthly active users on their platform. 67% of all the users are under 16 years & only 17% are over 25 years old.
Apart from playing games, a big chunk of these young users spend more than 2 hours coding, creating, designing, forming teams, negotiating and discussing projects, buying & selling digital assets and finding ways to earn Robux.
We know off so many platforms with larger user base than Roblox, but what stands out here is that in the first 9 months of 2020 alone, $1.24 billion worth of Robux (currency) was purchased on Roblox in real money terms.
And that is sizable purchasing power exhibited by a non-earning, school going audience.
This user base has begun to race up since kids all across the world were forced off schools & playgrounds as the pandemic spread.
Call it Metaverse or a game platform, it doesn't matter to the small but fast growing young user base as the network effect comes into play.
In his article for Wired magazine “the Metaverse is coming” David Baszucki shows us a small glimpse to his vision ofthe future,
“ People will meet in virtual worlds not just to play a game, but also to check out a new movie trailer or laugh at user-generated videos.
Education will move from learning to code online to learning core sciences with physics or biology simulations and ultimately becoming an immersive environment where classrooms are organized within it.
Some might have fun recreating familiar physical locations, such as their university campus or their company’s HQ, where they can meet with colleagues working remotely.”
Many of you may still be under the impression that this is too far fetched & something for the future if at all it has a future.
Guess what, surprise- the future is already here,
Morehouse College, Alma-mater of such influential figures as Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee, and Senator Raphael Warnock, announced that it will soon be offering two VR classes as part of a new partnership with VR education provider VictoryXR.
We all know in one way or the other the education system is lagging (to put it mildly) & there are a number of reasons why gaming technologies like Roblox & AR / VR will help us correct this anomaly.
Many of us have this impression that games are for kids, well think again.
Because technologies that powers those games/ VR/AR MR also empowers architects & builders, car manufacturers & car salesmen, designers & engineers, aircraft pilots & race car drivers etc, and this list can get quite long.
This is what Ben Thompson says about Roblox in his renowned tech blog The Stratechery,
“ In short, Roblox isn’t a game at all: it is a world in which one of the things you can do is play games, with a persistent identity, persistent set of friends, persistent money, all disconnected from the device that you use to access the world. That is the transformational change.”
Now, after 2020, doubts as to the power of digital to bring about transformation is slowly being laid to rest.
A situation like the global pandemic has only expedited the discovery of digital technologies & literally forced people of all skill levels to join the bandwagon or be left behind.
So did a platform like Roblox help kids make meaningful connections with the wider world, keep them engaged & helped them to learn.
You can find the answer in your neighborhood, Just talk to parents whose kids have access to Roblox.
Role of 3D in the world of Immersive experiences
3D makes the interactive experience real & along with AR/VR/MR has become the breakaway technologies for 2020–21.
When you use an AR/VR/MR experience you are interacting with a life-like 3D model of shoes,clothes, furniture, tractor, car or even a plane.
Similarly, when online buyers use configurators to visualize & customize size, shape, color of a product they want before they pull the trigger, what they see is a 3D model of your product.
Tony Parisi VR pioneer & global head at Unity technologies says that
“ Adoption of real time 3d will be the next major media type”.
There is data to back this up,
“ Customers are already asking for this kind of dynamic, immersive environment in other parts of their digital lives. 83% of customers pointed to images as the most influential factor in their online purchase decisions.
And in a recent Harris Poll, 60% of shoppers say they want to see products online in 3D and AR. Furthermore, they are willing to pay up to 20% more to get it.
The ROI is there.
Putting a 3D configurator on a brand’s website has helped some brands to realize an immediate 30% increase in conversion and a 50% reduction in returns by implementing interactive 3D visuals.”
3D has been around for ages & now it is expanding into most industries & leading the digital transformation revolution.
If you are a product company & you have been using 2d images, it would make business sense to begin a shift towards 3D technology.
Immersive news from Audi, Apple, Microsoft & more …
- Audi testing AR dashboards for its cars
- Latest update on Apple’s mixed reality glasses
- Microsoft launches MESH its AR/VR meeting platform
- Science fiction, tech, and games is your thing then check out this latest VR event coming up February 17.
Hope you like this edition, Thanks for reading, give me feedback to make this newsletter better & please subscribe below.
See you next week, till then keep rocking.
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