The 20 Most Important Metaverse Data, Trends, and Facts for 2023

Author: Samuel Chapman; Compiler: Heart of the Metaverse

Key Takeaways

• There is no fixed definition of the Metaverse, but most people agree that it is a three-dimensional virtual space that adds a visual interface to common online activities.
• After Facebook changed its name to “Meta”, many companies invested billions of dollars in the Metaverse. However, by 2023, interest has waned.
• Most consumers are interested in the Metaverse in social interaction and doing things they can’t do in the real world.

Since it first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, the term “Metaverse” has moved from science fiction to reality. The Metaverse, a shared virtual reality (VR) where avatars interact in a vast digital space, could soon impact our lives in the same way the internet has - but will it? Just take a look at the Metaverse stats below Data, you will know how things are going.

It’s unclear whether the Metaverse trend heralds a true Web 3.0 or is just a passing fad, but considering the money being spent developing it ($120 billion in the first five months of 2022 alone) we’re at least in the future There will also be news about the Metaverse within a few years. Facebook, for example, invested heavily in this concept and changed its company name to Meta.

We’ve put together a list of Metaverse statistics to keep you informed as the media continues to report on this potentially revolutionary concept.

5 Key Statistics for the 2023 Metaverse

1. The majority of potential Metaverse users (44%) would most like to use the Metaverse to communicate with friends and family in a more immersive way.
2. Three-quarters (77%) of Americans believe that the Metaverse could cause “serious harm” to real life.
3. At the end of 2021, the Google search volume of the term “Metaverse” reached its peak, with monthly searches exceeding 1 million times, and then began to decline significantly in early 2022.
4. Metaverse real estate transaction volume once exceeded $500 million, but transactions have slowed as interest waned.
5. Despite the slowdown in growth, assuming an annual growth rate of 41.6%, the Metaverse market will reach $936.57 billion by 2030.

**What exactly is the Metaverse? **

As a concept that only recently emerged from science fiction, the Metaverse does not yet have a universally accepted definition. It is widely believed to be a shared, three-dimensional, explorable digital space where users can fully exist in a way that they cannot on the current Internet. IoT hardware devices often play a key role.

Beyond that, there are many questions. Is the Metaverse a video game, a social network, a chat app, an augmented reality platform, some combination of the above, or something entirely different? So far, efforts to build the Metaverse have been fragmented, with companies unwilling to collaborate to build one. The kind of massive shared world seen in movies like Ready Player One.

Proponents of the Metaverse sometimes create confusion by using the term to describe different facets of the experience, from content to driving engines to underlying concepts like blockchain. Still, with a little research, we can tell where the builders of the Metaverse agree and where they still disagree.

1 There is currently no unified metaverse

Most people who preach about the Metaverse are not referring to a single platform. Instead, they use the “Metaverse” the same way people use the term “Internet,” to describe a single technology that is adopted by everyone through global consensus.

Such a metaverse does not exist. Several competing virtual worlds, including Roblox, Decentraland, and The Sandbox, can all claim to be nascent metaverses,** but “metaverse” means complete interoperability, that is, every digital world can seamlessly Interactive, like unrelated websites on the Global Information Network**.

2. Consumers are keen to build social connections

In April 2022, researchers surveyed 2,939 people in Europe and Asia about the Metaverse; *59% of respondents said there was at least one activity they would prefer to participate in virtually rather than physically *.

Of those respondents, 44% said they were most looking forward to using the Metaverse to connect with friends and family in a more immersive way. Another 26% said they were excited to “explore the digital world,” 10% said they would use it to work remotely, and 9% were most enthusiastic about tokenizing the Metaverse through NFTs and real estate. There are also some other uses, accounting for 11% of the total number of surveys.

3 The entertainment industry has the greatest potential for change

According to research from Wunderman Thompson, consumers expect the Metaverse to have a greater impact on the entertainment industry than any other industry, with 90% of survey participants believing that interactive experiences will evolve well beyond video games.

For example, the shared PlayStation Dreams world typically used to create and share video games is being used to create a feature-length movie. “Winter’s Journey” is directed by Alex Helfrecht and stars John Malkovich. It is currently in production and has no release date yet.

4 Fashion and retail may also be affected

Of those surveyed who are aware of the Metaverse, 70% believe it will be used as a virtual storefront. Several companies have already opened stores in the Metaverse, with Nike and Forever 21 opening stores in Roblox and Skechers planning to open a store in Decentraland.

History of Metaverse

The Metaverse’s journey from concept to feasibility spanned decades. Today, it’s still evolving as companies try various ways to create shared augmented and virtual reality.

5. The first shared virtual world in 1978

Multiplayer online games are almost as old as the internet. In 1979, Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw created MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), a text-based game that allowed Internet users to explore a fantasy world through the arpanet. MUD can be called the first online RPG and is therefore an ancestor of games like World of Warcraft, which itself gave rise to the concept of the Metaverse.

6. The term “Metaverse” first appeared in 1992

In 1992, writer Neal Stephenson’s novel “Avalanche” was also the first time the term “Metaverse” appeared in print. Snow Crash tells the story of a shared virtual world where people go to escape a corporate-dominated dystopia. Other works have used similar plot points, including the novel Ready Player One and the anime series Sword Art Online.

7 “Fortnite” has the highest usage rate in the world

From early MUD prototypes to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as EverQuest, Final Fantasy XIV, and World of Warcraft, many shared virtual worlds can be considered examples of the Metaverse. There are also popular examples like Second Life, but not explicitly video games.

“Fortnite” is the most popular APP and can be called the metaverse.

Games like Minecraft and Roblox have attracted millions of users, but the most successful game today may be Fortnite. Not only does the battle royale game average 240 million monthly users, it also holds the record for the most concurrent players of any game, with 12.3 million people attending a virtual concert in 2020.

One caveat: Although PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the granddaddy of the battle royale genre, reports more players than Fortnite, those numbers don’t always match player observations. To be on the safe side, we’re temporarily naming Fortnite.

8 User interest in the Metaverse is declining

While the companies driving the Metaverse’s boom are excited about its potential, the public may not share their enthusiasm. In late October 2021, Google searches for the term “Metaverse” peaked, with more than 1 million searches per month, and then began to decline in February 2022. As of this writing, interest in the Metaverse at Google is only 5% of its peak, perhaps because AI has taken over its place in the cultural trend.

Investment in Metaverse

Lately, much of the interest in the Metaverse has been driven by money. Starting in 2021, a large number of investors began to view the Metaverse as a real business opportunity with huge potential returns.

9. Metaverse investment explodes in 2022

Not only did Metaverse-related technologies attract a staggering $120 billion in investment from January to May 2022, but that number was more than double the amount invested in all of 2021. That year, investors invested just $57 billion.

While more than doubling investment in 2021 is impressive, it’s worth noting that much of the funding in 2022 comes from Microsoft’s proposal to acquire video game company Activision Blizzard, in part to “fund the Metaverse.” Provide building blocks". As of August 2023, the deal remained on hold due to U.S. antitrust concerns.

10. Facebook’s big bet

Facebook’s actions over the past few years suggest that it may be more bullish on the Metaverse than any other company. After officially changing its name to Meta in 2021 and establishing the Reality Labs division to develop Metaverse technology, Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to invest at least $10 billion per year in the virtual world.

Zuckerberg said the Metaverse may take 10 years to come to fruition, meaning total investment will exceed $100 billion. This all-inclusive approach has not been widely embraced. In October 2022, Meta’s stock price fell by more than 60%, and a well-known shareholder wrote an open letter asking the board of directors to withdraw its investment in Meta.

11. Another $1 billion investment

As we mentioned in Stat 9, Microsoft considers its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard to be an investment in the Metaverse. However, Microsoft and Meta aren’t the only companies investing more than $1 billion in their Metaverse capabilities.

Epic Games, which owns Fortnite and Rocket League, received $2 billion from investors to advance its Metaverse ambitions, including developing the Unreal Graphics Engine. Unity, another 3D rendering engine, spent $16 It acquired New Zealand special effects company Weta Digital, which produced the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, for US$100 million.

12. Even the government is involved

In July 2022, the Spanish government allocated $4.1 million to companies in the EU whose products involve the Metaverse or Web3, and allocated $8.5 million to produce video games and Metaverse content.

13. Withdrawal of giants in 2023

So far, 2023 has been a “hangover” year for the Metaverse, as companies and investors start to realize that the technology isn’t taking off as expected. Microsoft and Disney both canceled their Metaverse divisions because customer acceptance and revenue couldn’t match the technology’s high startup costs.

Even Meta has de-emphasized the Metaverse, despite spending an estimated $36 billion on Reality Labs. Zuckerberg told shareholders in March 2023 that generative AI was now his company’s biggest investment, and the Metaverse was relegated to just one product among many.

Yuanverse Real Estate Boom

One of the most common ways to join the metaverse is to purchase land in the popular metaverse. Just like in the real world, the Metaverse platform keeps real estate supply scarce to drive demand. Ownership of Metaverse real estate is recorded on the blockchain, making each parcel theoretically unique (much like an NFT).

14 $1.4 billion in real estate exchanges in 2022

The Metaverse real estate market first heated up in 2021, when users of the “big four” platforms (Decentraland, Sandbox, Somnium Space, and Cryptovoxels) traded $500 million in Metaverse real estate. Additionally, sales in 2022 were even greater, reaching $1.4 billion. U.S. dollar, up about 180%. One sale cost 333 Ethereum (ETH), which was about $1 million at the time.

*This concept image shows off a tight real estate plot set in the sandbox metaverse. *

Interestingly, much of 2022’s record-breaking sales came from new platforms, notably Yuga Labs’ Otherside, which accounted for three-quarters of sales. Finally, in 2021, transaction volumes remained low as artificially scarce supply dried up , the four largest economies lost most of their market share.

15 The craze may be over

With the rapid growth of virtual real estate, there was extreme optimism, but the market failed to live up to expectations. Throughout 2022, real estate has seen depreciation on every major Metaverse platform, even Otherside (which started the craze in the first place). Decentraland performed the best, but still lost about 4% of its cumulative real estate value.

Another bad sign is that transaction volume is still at rock bottom in April 2023, with only about $50,000 in virtual land transactions on Decentraland per week. This is not surprising considering that 2022 is also the year of Crypto’s big crash.

Consumer Behavior in the Metaverse

While companies have poured significant resources into developing the Metaverse, the future of the Metaverse will be meaningless without customers adopting the technology. Gauging public acceptance of the Metaverse can be tricky. However, based on the average internet user, we can draw some conclusions about the Metaverse.

16 Over 400 million daily users

According to research by consulting firm metaversed, the virtual world reached a milestone of 400 million daily active users (DAU) in 2022. However, this number includes more traditional metaverses like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite, which have a combined 385 million users. The blockchain-based world like Decentraland only accounts for 15 million.

If you include games like Minecraft, the Metaverse seems to be more popular.

This distinction is important because Web3 technology is key to delivering on the promise of Metaverse. For example, much of the hype relies on being able to move assets like NFTs from one platform to another. The public’s willingness to accept the Web3 concept can be seen as a proxy for acceptance of the metaverse as a whole.

17 Metaverse can cause harm

According to a survey of U.S. consumers by Tidio, more than three-quarters (77%) of respondents believe that the Metaverse poses a risk of “serious harm” to real life. The most common fears include physical decline, addiction to technology, and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

However, the results are not all doom and gloom. In the same survey, 39% of respondents believed the Metaverse could allow people to overcome real-world disabilities, and 37% believed the Metaverse could enhance their creativity.

18 Things you wouldn’t do in real life

The same Tidio survey asked respondents to name something they would never do in the real world but might be willing to do in the Metaverse; 38% said they wanted to try extreme sports, and 22% said they wanted to Hunting big animals, 19% would engage in a gladiatorial fight to the death and 17% would consider having a virtual harem.

These numbers are less alarming when we consider that the Metaverse is a virtual world and no real people (or animals) can be harmed by these actions. However, 14% of respondents did say they would engage in hate speech in the metaverse, so the potential for real-world harm still exists.

The future of the metaverse

It’s been less than two years since Facebook’s rebrand made the Metaverse a household name, but it feels like it’s been longer. Since 2021, we’ve seen the Metaverse go from a futuristic metaphor to a multi-billion dollar industry to yesterday’s news. Wild fluctuations make it difficult to predict what the Metaverse will look like next year, let alone 2030, but we can still try.

19 USD 800 billion in 2024

Shortly after Facebook announced its name change and its intention to dominate the Metaverse, analysts at Bloomberg predicted that the global Metaverse market could reach $800 billion by 2024, including software subscriptions (especially video games) and Advertisement Income**.

20 USD 936 billion in 2030

Analysts’ forecasts for the first half of 2023 are slightly dovish but still forecast growth. An April report from Grandview Research showed that assuming an annual growth rate of 41.6%, the market size will reach $936.57 billion by 2030.

The report uses a broad definition of the Metaverse, including infrastructure, hardware (especially AR and VR headsets), software (including virtual worlds and the tools used to create virtual worlds), and assets in the Metaverse (such as real estate). According to Grandview, AR and VR devices generate the largest revenue for virtual worlds as they are widely used in industries that simulate reality.

The Metaverse needs to be proven by the market

Although the Metaverse faces challenges in 2023, losing investment and being surpassed by generative artificial intelligence, supporters still believe that these are just experiences in the process of growth. To the Evangelist, the Metaverse is inevitable, even if it was not founded by the Meta. They point to research that shows people want better virtual worlds, and in areas other than gaming.

Opponents point out that the Metaverse has always lacked coherence, with the builders disagreeing on its final form. They believe the technology is too expensive for what it’s worth. Ultimately, only the market can prove which side is right.