What They Say
Last week there was lots of discussion on issues of the ‘Metaverse’, the idea that XR can allow interaction in a digital virtual world made up of immersive shared spaces, an idea that has been around a long time. The aim is to allow online avatars to take part in activities and events as they would in the real world.
Facebook has been talking about this for some time and has a development called Horizon Workooms and which was released for public testing last week, for use on the Oculus Quest 2 headset. Through Workrooms, users can join meetings in virtual reality or dial into a virtual room from a computer by video call, similar to Zoom or Google Meet.
Earlier in the week, Roblox Corp, which has an online interactive game platform with huge adoption among youngsters, also said that it thought its platform could act as a hub for virtual and immersive experiences where thousands of people can simultaneously attend concerts, school or staff meetings.
Separately, SK Telecom of Korea said that it plans to bring its Ifland virtual platform to 80+ countries by the end of the year. A Quest version will be made available this year. As well as having virtual spaces, users can purchase self-created digital items, such as clothing, via a market system due out later this year.
What We Think
This kind of idea has been around for a long, long time. By chance, on a slow day for press releases, we got a release today from respected analyst, Juniper Research, that pointed to huge potential growth in the market for VR porn from $719 million to $19 billion in 2026. (Juniper Research: Global Revenue from Adult Virtual Reality Content to Reach $19 Billion by 2026, as Subscription Models Dominate)
It’s an old idea that much technology is driven by the market for pornography and it looks as though it will be a factor, too, in XR growth if Juniper is correct. There is an extract of the report on the Juniper webite that points out that a company called MindGeek has an effective monopoly on the industry, via its ownership of sites including youporn. (BR)
