Microsoft vs Meta | Who will win the Metaverse War?

Microsoft vs Meta

Microsoft is preparing on killing Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse before it actually launches and they will not even need to make a VR headset to do it. Now, this might sound absurd after all Zuckerberg is so invested in the metaverse that he renamed his whole company just to concentrate on the action. He is preparing on funding 180 billion dollars over the next 10 years to build his desired metaverse. 

But his plan is unsatisfactory for a few causes. At first glimpse, Zuckerberg looks well-positioned here because billions of individuals use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp every day to link with friends and family and he also holds the biggest virtual reality firm, while VR is still seen as a plaything to most people but quests even outsold Xbox in 2021. Even though there are a ton of signs that Zuckerberg will be able to deliver but Microsoft will not gonna just let him prevail.

There are 3 critical reasons why Microsoft will whip Zuckerberg in the battle for the metaverse. 

Gaming Industry 

A lot of people already saying that "metaverse is just a video game" and to verify their point right they will point to SecondLife, World of Warcraft, and Fortnite. They are saying that we kind of already have a metaverse and these people aren’t incorrect. 

Gaming is a prominent entry point to the metaverse. But in the long term, things are gonna get a lot wilder. These metaverse adventures are going to become bigger and more immersive with the capability to interact with millions of people all in a single conveyed virtual world. Digital assets and avatars will move between different spaces and the full economy will emerge to support a wide range of supporters. We don’t know exactly what platform will be the most prevailing yet but one thing is for certain gaming is gonna play a huge role here and that's why Microsoft's strategy is so brainiac. 

Microsoft has been a huge performer in video games for decades now. First with pc games like doom in the 90s and after with Xbox games like gears of war. Facebook on the other hand only offered us Farmville and not many people will call that one a definitive. Creating a platform for great games is one thing but Microsoft can't do great with them if they don’t hold the studios that create them. So, Microsoft has been evolving a gaming empire for years and it’s about to get a lot more prominent. 

In 2014 Microsoft bought Mine-craft for 2.5 billion bucks. The game has extended to more than 140 million monthly active users and is fast morphing into its own mini metaverse. Then in 2020, Microsoft purchased Zenimax media for 7.5 billion bucks which granted them the privileges to fallout, doom, and the elder scrolls. All of these games have communities of modders that are varying and expanding the experience and most newly Microsoft purchased Activision for almost a mind-boggling 69 billion bucks. This purchase has drawn a lot of attention and most people are misinterpreting what’s really happening on here. 

Activision currently holds some of the enormous gaming franchises in the world games like call of duty, overwatch, and tony hawk. These games are multi-platform and widely available on PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. But the question is will they remain that way? Microsoft can make these games sole to their medium and sure this sounds like a wise business move for Microsoft to take Call of Duty out from PlayStation and more people will purchase Xboxes. But that is not their approach.

Back in 2017, Microsoft founded the Xbox game pass which proposed access to a massive library of Microsoft games all for a single monthly payment. It was a NetFlix model but it kept a significant transformation in their business approach. Before the gamepass, if Microsoft purchased a game studio and then made those titles sole to Xbox sales would immediately start dropping. Maybe some hard-core gamers will swap from PlayStation To Xbox but in general, these acquisitions will be value-destroying. But now Microsoft can resume selling games for full price on other consoles while offering these games as a domain of the Xbox game pass bundle.

The second problem people get wrong about the Activision acquisition is the idea that this will form a gaming monopoly. Even though this is a massive acquisition the game publishing market is still incredibly fragmented. Even if you combine the earnings of Microsoft and Activision in-game revenue you see that Sony and Tencent are still the more extensive. So one has entire control over the gaming industry yet. 

But of all the game publishers that Microsoft is currently contesting against Facebook and Meta aren’t even listed. This is because Zuckerberg has only made a few small gaming endeavors for VR and has yet to obtain any of the big gaming organizations. It could be that he just doesn't acknowledge that the standard gaming franchises will revise to the metaverse. If the metaverse eventually develops from the gaming industry Zuckerberg gonna be in a big crisis. People might be using quest headsets to access the metaverse and relish VR experiences but Microsoft will have a tremendous advantage in terms of actually depicting how users interact with the metaverse.

There is another track to the metaverse though and it is reasonable here to look at how personal computers curved up in every household.

Use of Personal Computers

Everyone nowadays desires personal computers in their home but back when they were first unleashed to the public most buyers had no interest in them. These big machines were basically heightened calculators so most people had no benefit for them in their houses. But rather quickly they became essential at work. Companies purchased their employee's computers because it boosted productivity. The fascinating thing was once people got used to utilizing them at work they wanted to use them at residence too and as the number of home computers rose so did the market for non-work applications like games. You might buy a computer to do some small things but pretty fast you want to play games on your PC. 

It is likely that the metaverse will pursue a similar direction. First, a company buys you a virtual reality headset so you can cooperate remotely. With everyone working remotely paying a few hundred bucks is fully worth it if it can enhance productivity even to a little extent. Companies can even send every one of their employees a complimentary VR headset just for a vacation party. 

Zuckerberg is evidently believed in this vision and wants to make horizon workrooms the default application for virtual assignment. But can he beat Microsoft here, fundamentally it’s very challenging for companies to swap their direction from consumer to business? Now facebook founded workplace back in 2016 so they aren’t fully new to the drive. But  Microsoft has been selling software to businesses since the 1970s. It’s just a completely separate level of background here and even though Microsoft is still near associated with the Windows desktop operating system Satya Nadella has essentially diverted Microsoft away from a direction on windows and comprehensively adopt the cloud.

Microsoft comprehends that very few companies will solely cling to using pcs with windows on them. A lot of people choose to use Apple products and many developers urge on running Linux. This device fragmentation was going to restrict the triumph of any Microsoft product that needed windows to run. So they created teams. But Microsoft is preparing something much more significant with teams. It begins with document sharing and video chat essentially all the normal business things and then gradually grows the more serious metaverse ideas Zuckerberg always speaking about. 

The enterprise alliance side of things states way duller than the video game side but it really is really crucial to Microsoft’s metaverse plan. If you think about a metaverse as a kind of mirror globe where you can interact with data and applications in a better immersive way then Microsoft might reach there sooner. For starters, Microsoft already has a suite of developments that let companies construct what is called digital twins. These are essentially virtual models of material objects like manufacturing tools. But it’s not sufficient to just have a 3d model of a plant, companies like to know what each doozy of equipment is doing, how much power the plant is using, and when the most delinquent set of products will come off the stripe. This is all part of an internet of things that were very dapper a few years ago but quite encountered a foothold with the everyday consumer. 

Where this gets intriguing is when workers go and even see the digital twin data while wandering around the material world. This is made achievable by augmented reality like Microsoft Hololens. Although interestingly Microsoft isn’t specifically tied to that singular piece of hardware. Microsoft is locomoting away from a single computing platform and desires to work universally. That’s why you can use teams to converse with co-workers on a MacBook and you can also stream gears of war to your iPhone. Microsoft isn’t curious about shutting you into a bit of hardware and that’s going to be a major advantage going onwards.

So Microsoft is striking Zuckerberg on two fronts. They’ve got an ideal foothold on business users and they’ve got a gigantic empire over in gaming. Zuckerberg is getting really whipped up right now but he appears to be doubling down regardless so let's find out why?

Predicting The Future

Sometimes you can see the future completely but still fail to conduct a winning plan. That is what happen to Bill gates nearly three decades back and he knows that. The year was 1995 and Bill was swinging high, everyone was purchasing pcs, windows were revolutionizing workplaces and Microsoft was on the path to becoming the most valuable business in the world. So Bill stood on set and mapped out what he believed would come next. Bill described how you will be able to order things from your phone, cars will have enormous displays, and how residences will have smart controls. These foretellings all came true but oddly adequately not because of Microsoft. Even though Bill clarified everything precisely how a smartphone should work Microsoft been never been capable to gain market share against Apple or Google. Also the exact is true for maps, payments, and smart homes. Google and Apple are prevalent in those areas with Microsoft usually a faraway third. So what does this means to Zuckerberg and his strategies to build the metaverse? 

Well, that 1995 Bill Gates exhibition shows that even when your foretellings about the future are accurate it doesn't necessarily indicate that you’ll prevail. It's quite possible that everything Zuckerberg has spread out will come valid.  

Microsoft missed the mobile internet revolution because they were too concentrated on the Windows operating system and I'm pretty sure they will do whatever they can this time to win the metaverse war. Once Satya Nadella decoupled Microsoft from windows then the firm could become more and more elegant and could really start contending in new industries. 

But the real question is when will the metaverse actually arrive?