For the metaverse to be impactful, it needs hardware that’s less burdensome to wear and less expensive than current models and software capable of conveying individual facial expressions. Until technology improves, the metaverse will still be mostly talk. No doubt that will change but how that will work, and whether it will be effective or not, has yet to be determined. It appears right now that the beauty industry can use the metaverse for promotion and brand-building but there hasn’t been a beauty product created yet for the metaverse and it’s not clear that there ever will be.Īlthough the gaming environment is most like the metaverse right now, there is no game right now that can link you to a shopping environment. The original version of almost all those images isn’t worth even one penny to you.īeauty companies like NARS and Clinique have experimented with NFTs but the ability of the beauty industry to have products for the metaverse is ambiguous at best. Think about the number of images that show up randomly just in your inbox every day. But not every NFT is worth anything, in fact very few are. The discussion about the metaverse is often conflated with NFTs. Also, because the metaverse is still unformed, it’s possible that people’s investment in how they present themselves in the metaverse could be higher than I’m assuming. If they did, the price could go higher, much higher for super-luxury brands, but it’s not clear now that consumers will want the same brands in the metaverse as they have in the physical world. The only exception might be if high-end or luxury brands made virtual products for the metaverse. So the estimates for metaverse fashion that you read about being in the tens of billions are likely far overstated. ![]() Since a virtual garment has an incremental cost of about zero, the price is likely to be pennies compared to prices for real-world garments. Second, for most garments or accessories, the key basis for the price is the cost of making the product. That can change but for the moment, any “garment” or “accessory” you buy for an avatar can only be used in one metaverse location and that limits its usefulness. That means something you buy in one metaverse environment is not transferable to another metaverse environment. But the opportunity for avatar fashion has a few problems that I haven’t heard anyone talk about.įirst, there’s currently no interoperability on the metaverse. There’s a lot of talk about digital fashion products that could be worn by avatars in the metaverse. Once that happens, it will likely displace existing forms of social media and that’s why Facebook is spending so much on developing the metaverse, they don’t want to see their revenue stream get taken by another developer of the technology. It’s how people will interact one-to-one in ways that social media now can’t accomplish. It would also have an enormous impact on the viability of many physical stores.Īccording to Nancy Berger, SVP at Hearst Media and Publisher of Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Men’s Health and other publications, the metaverse will become the next social network. If that could happen, then the process of converting visitors into customers, which today is much less effective online than in-store, could make online retail a far more viable, and valuable, business. ![]() A tool that would allow consumers to explore and discover better than they can now would bring online shopping closer to what consumers can accomplish in stores, without ever leaving home. The potential for retail in the metaverse, once the technology is better, is to make online shopping more engaging and useful. ![]() Today in metaverse meetings people are presented as avatars, usually cartoon-like characters, and that’s too primitive to convey facial expressions even as well as a zoom call can. The challenge is that there is no commercially viable technology yet for conveying facial expressions via a headset. But headsets, and the metaverse, are not just for gaming, they can also facilitate one-on-one or group meetings among far-flung people in the metaverse.
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