Why did the metaverse fail?

Meta bids farewell to its metaverse project, Horizon Worlds. Well, well, well. The company is scaling back, keeping the app alive for VR, but no new features and less focus. Does it come as a surprise? I don’t think so. The company’s metaverse division has lost nearly $80 billion since 2020, with only a few hundred thousand active users a month. For a company with 3 billion users on Facebook, that’s not great. Zuckerberg didn’t live up to the promises of virtual footfall and business. And it doesn’t seem like Horizon Worlds will survive long. They were pulling the plug on it, now they say they’re scaling back… Which is exactly the kind of clarity people love when spending money on expensive tech. Not really so much. The company will now focus more on AI, following the trail of money. But the metaverse failure isn’t exclusive to Meta. Remember that time the EU launched its own metaverse and only a few people attended the launch party? And in the smart city and utility industry? Same story. The metaverse promised immersive, real-time digital replicas of cities and infrastructure that workers could walk through virtually. But in practice, utilities and city operators prioritise data, analytics and digital twins over virtual worlds. Turns out dashboards beat avatars. Immersion isn’t the key, understanding what’s happening to take the correct next step is. Operators need alerts and insights. And if they want something more visual, there are digital twins, which already allow them to see a virtual representation of what’s happening and even do simulations. Then there’s implementation of a metaverse. Sure it looks cool, but, teach workers how to use the metaverse ask them to wear the headsets for long periods of time... Cities and utilities, with constrained budgets, prioritise tools that are quick, easy and useful. Tools that turn massive amounts of data into clear decisions, the main goal of a smart city or utility. Metaverses have a complicated integration and an unclear ROI… And now with AI in the picture, the industry is shifting. From visualizing the now to prediction, to try and avoid the issues in the first place and go from being reactive to being proactive. It’s not that there isn’t any room for VR and the metaverse in the digitalization of cities and utilities. It’s that they have very specific use cases. They can help with training personnel for real world scenarios, or to simulate or plan for certain projects. The metaverse didn’t fail in the smart city and utility industry because it wasn’t impressive. It failed because it wasn’t viable or realistic for the budgets.