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Why Fortnite is well-positioned to dominate a potential metaverse
The Immersive Wire - 22 April 2024 (Monday Briefing)
Tom Ffiske
April 22, 2024
Executive summary
Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse and spatial computing. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:
Headline: Why Fortnite is well-positioned to dominate a potential metaverse (analysis below).
Conversation-starter: Dyson released an AR to show how well you have been cleaning.
Interesting read: Inside the design of Beat Saber.
Candidates board: Professionals are looking for work.
Other stories: AWE has its Auggie Award nominations close on 23 April, and Innovate UK is hosting the Immersive Tech Awards reception on 21 May (more stories below).
Helldivers II is great fun. It is only right that we spread Managed Democracy across the galaxy, whether our xeno neighbors want it or not. I also see no problematic discussions with using aliens as oil.
Analysis
Fortnite is well-positioned to take over a potential metaverse.
What’s the context? This was an article I was writing, but its scope and depth was taking a while to finalise. For now, I will share my preliminary conclusions with a light expansion.
Fortnite’s epic growth: The game has realized its vision as a hub for gaming and socializing, after years of strong growth with an ambitious strategy. It is one of the most popular live service titles in existence.
An open metaverse: Fortnite’s success shows the economic potential of the open metaverse, as a place where a variety of activities can happen and where users can financially benefit from an open spatial web. If Epic continues its trajectory, Fortnite will be seen as a case study of success.
A dominant Epic Games: But if it did become open, then Epic Games stands to benefit the most from an open metaverse as it may already have such an entrenched and powerful position in the market. Think of it as an incredibly large whale entering an open small pond.
Small players, small fry: Start-ups and companies may benefit from an open metaverse, but may also lose out due to the size and scope of Epic’s comparative positioning. It is hard to compete with a company with the network benefits and scale of player lock-in, compared to new entrants attempting to innovate.
What do you think? Let’s debate in the Immersive Wire Discord.
Other notable stories
Got any stories? Let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.
AWE has its Auggie Award nominations close on 23 April.
Best Buy launches an AR app for the Apple Vision Pro.
The Flip, a zombie multiplayer game, is out now on the Quest.
Innovate UK is hosting the Immersive Tech Awards reception on 21 May.
Treeview announced Inviewer, a library of Spatial STEM Simulations for Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest.
Youtube can now go up to 8K on Meta Quest.
Zombie Bar Simulator (yes, it’s exactly what you think this is) is now available on PlayStation VR2.
Got a news story? Contact me with the details here.
Note: The Immersive Wire is run by Tom Ffiske, who also works within Accenture’s metaverse group. The contents of the newsletter should not be regarded as Accenture’s views.