OPINIONS ON THE METAVERSE Remain A Mixed Bag

CES 2023 renewed the debate on the future of the metaverse. While the exhibitors were all agog about it, the experts on panels suggested moving ahead with caution

- JANANI G. VIKRAM

It was evident from the videos that visitors to the Central Hall at CES 2023 were enjoying the immersive treat spread out for them by various metaverse tech companies exhibiting their ware. On the other hand, the expert panels were trying to arrive at a reasonable definition for the metaverse and figure out how it might really be used and by whom. Together they managed to fire once again the imaginations of those who had almost written off the metaverse as empty hype. And well, we got a great spin for our quarterly update.

What is the Metaverse?

Despite everyone talking about it, this question never ceases to exist. Every panel discussion on the metaverse starts with how it can be defined. During the "The Road to the Open Metaverse" session at the global technology conference in CES 2023, Neil Trevett, Vice President of Developer Ecosystems, Nvidia, and Chairman of the Metaverse Standards Forum, described the metaverse as a virtual world that combines the connectivity of the Web with the immersive of spatial computing. "It's GPUs, it's extended reality, it's virtual reality, it's Web3 and the magic pixie dust-artificial intelligence and machine learning, which makes everything magical... When you put these potentially disruptive technologies together, the interesting stuff is going to happen," he said.

He opined that business leaders should not get carried away by the hype but should nevertheless start preparing for it because it will gradually creep into our lives. Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder suggested that metaverse technology vendors need to be focused on the nuts and bolts of business fundamentals in An image cr in photoreal 2023. "If they show a flashy demo but do not have any customers? That is a red flag," he warned. According to him, enterprises might get more tangible benefits from using the metaverse for employee collaboration, training, onboarding, etc.