The year 2022 has not been a particularly favorable time for businesses engaged in the metaverse. During this time period, the Reality Labs division of Meta lost $13.72 billion. Subsequently, a further $3.99 billion loss occurred in the first quarter of 2023. The employees face the possibility of being laid off. Horizon Worlds, which is Meta’s virtual domain, is struggling to remain active and functional despite creating a few entertaining parodies.
Meta is not the only entity that has entered the metaverse arena. As a result of its misguided assessment of the metaverse concept, various businesses are now hesitant to enter the virtual and interoperable space, which has had a profoundly negative effect.
Despite all of this, the British company Improbable, which was founded eleven years ago, has maintained its position within the gaming industry. According to Herman Narula, the CEO of Improbable, the company felt compelled to reorganize its business functions and move its entire capital into a single arena. The idea was to shift from the concept of creating games to providing experiences that were comparable to games but existed within the concept of the metaverse.
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Improbable released a statement stating that its losses decreased from $159 million in 2021 to $23 million in 2022. The company’s revenue reached $95 million after experiencing an increase. This was a result of the metaverse’s pivot. With $150 million in new funding, the corporation founded MSquared, a network of interconnected metaverses, in April 2022. It included a 16z and a Softbank Vision Fund 2 fund. Elrond, a blockchain corporation, subsequently contributed an additional $100 million to the business.
The game plan was to provide brands and businesses with the option of creating their own metaverse exposure, along with events, via technology that had the capacity to work in tandem with blockchains and Web3 programs. Improbable is known to have under its wing clients like soccer teams and crypto projects such as Yuga Labs, a company responsible for building the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and is currently engaged in a metaverse called Otherside.
In the upcoming days, Improbable has two virtual events lined up. The first is a Major League Baseball game watch party, and the second is a metaverse get-together for soccer enthusiasts. As per Narula, the fascination surrounding the metaverse has had a negative impact, but they are involved in addressing the troublesome issues.
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Narula is of the opinion that crypto projects need to shift towards the metaverse. He feels that various projects do not have the funding like Yuga, which has managed to acquire a significant amount of capital sourced from venture capitalists and via the sale of NFTs. He goes on to add that the maximum number of NFT projects need to adopt the idea of shipping continuously to the community.
