Observers love to talk about change. It gives them the chance to flex their analytical muscles and present some “what if” scenarios with a certain degree of risk-free authority.
Sure, it can go spectacularly wrong when making short-term predictions. Still, more forward-looking projections are generally treated with more forgiveness, perhaps because the sea of other forecasts muddies the water when it’s time to pay the piper.
With this in mind, I decided to indulge in a bit of fortune-telling this week and ask whether publishers need to prepare for the metaverse. This subject has been on my mind thanks to metaverse believers (read investors) speaking of the tech’s potential to be a significant digital disruptor.
I’m not so sure. Here’s the TL;DR for the time-pressed among you: the metaverse is unlikely to be an issue for publishers for at least a decade, more likely two decades and possibly never.
A Pessimistic Perspective
First up, I’m a massive tech fan. I’ve been obsessed with tech since I built my first computer roughly 20 years ago.
I’ve met most new tech launches with copious amounts of excitement. I was even one of the few who naively believed that Google Wave would replace emails one day. That was until I realized it was a standalone product that wasn’t designed to interact with emails. What a profound disappointment that day was.
And yet, when I initially heard of the metaverse, I was left scratching my head. It’s a cool idea but incredibly problematic in terms of practical implementation. For those needing some clarification on what the tech is, Wired has a fantastic article exploring how the word “metaverse” is losing all meaning.
I won’t spoil that article too much, as it’s essential reading for those who want a fundamental understanding of the topic. Still, the leading argument is that replacing the phrase “the metaverse” with “cyberspace” doesn’t significantly change its meaning.
I’m a big fan of the take that metaverse can mean different things to the businesses and individuals that use it. But there are other issues I have with the metaverse.
Whenever the metaverse is discussed, I think of the book and movie Ready Player One, in which humanity splits its time between the physical world and a virtual shared universe that provides a lifelike experience.
If you’re being pitched something else, you’re being sold a rebranded product that has been around for decades. Does anybody remember Second Life? While the media struggled to define it around the time of its launch, that didn’t stop some users from trading digital assets to become IRL millionaires.
So, what’s stopping the emergence of a true metaverse?
Technical Limitations
There are many answers to this question, with a common one being that tech companies have a habit of building walled gardens. Somebody moving between, say, Apple’s metaverse to Meta’s version will most likely have to leave their digital assets behind.
But there’s a more pressing, practical question than whether tech corporations can play nice. Spoiler: they can’t.
Remember when I said I’ve been building computers for around 20 years? A passion for video games initially drove that interest. The most powerful computers are costly but provide a level of graphical fidelity unmatched by their console brethren.
With that in mind, the graphical limitations of delivering a realistic metaverse are severe. And don’t get sucked in by the “ultra-realistic” marketing spiel; it doesn’t mean lifelike; it means just a generational step up.
Not only is the processing and graphical computational power needed to deliver something within a stone’s throw of Ready Player One nonexistent, but the cost of developing that tech and then rolling it out to a global customer base will be eye-watering.
Looking at Apple’s Vision Pro, which I’ll admit has some breathtaking advances in terms of the interface, it’s a costly and cumbersome way of consuming the same media we do now.
And that’s the point.
While I said publishers probably wouldn’t need to worry about the metaverse for the next two decades, I still suspect there’s a good chance that rapid technological advancement won’t even matter in the long run.
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Same Content, Different Medium
Between the interesting piece we ran a couple of weeks ago about BookTok’s impact on book sales and the numbers around physical media consumption, it’s hard to argue that print media is going anywhere.
And why should it? Print and digital publications convey the same message, using the same text base, with the medium being the differentiator. Should text publishers worry that the metaverse will drive people to stop reading?
It seems ridiculous to even suggest such a thing. Even Apple pitches its Vision Pro as a new way to consume existing media.
Ultimately, I suspect the metaverse may only be a minor disruption for publishers. I struggle to see how or why content would need to be optimized for virtual screens the size of TVs in quite the same way the rise of mobile devices demanded.
For those of you who made it to the end of one of my longer posts, thanks, and feel free to contact me and share your thoughts!
