Meta Needs to Monetize the Metaverse, Could In-Universe Games Be the Answer?

The metaverse was a widely hyped announcement last year, especially since Facebook decided to rebrand entirely to Meta because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making their focus on this new form of tech hard to miss. In spite of the fact that this is the case, a lot of people are still confused about what the Metaverse is, and despite all of the hype Meta has yet to come up with a strategy to monetize what is currently looking like little more than a gimmick.

One tactic that Meta would look to implement would be creating games inside the Metaverse and monetizing them by taking a cut of all in-universe transactions. This is clearly a leaf that the company has taken out of Roblox’s playbook, with Minecraft and other similar immersive gaming universes likely being a source of inspiration for the struggling tech juggernaut as well.

Meta already has a few properties that could offer monetized gaming applications such as Horizon Worlds, but with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that it doesn’t have all that many games in it. It falls well short of the mark set by Roblox and Minecraft, and to top that off Meta is looking to charge a hefty 47.5% share of any purchases that are made in the app with all things having been considered and taken into account.

The thing is, Horizon Worlds is not exactly a videogame in the same way that Roblox is. It could be something else entirely such as an NFT marketplace, and since Meta is trying to push its Metaverse as a fully realize universe that has all of the features of reality inside it, this steep commission would be difficult for them to justify. After all, no one wants to do business in a virtual space and give the company that owns that space half their money if they can just start a real life business, so this calls into question the relevance or necessity of the Metaverse as well as whether or not anyone would be interested in it.

However, the 47.5% share might seem more reasonable with the right context. After all, with 30% of revenue going to platform hosts like Apple and Google, games like Roblox often need to take half of in app purchase revenue to pay for these services including credit card transaction processing as well as to turn a profit. This actually leaves as little as 28% of in game purchasing revenue for the creators themselves, so Meta’s offer actually isn’t much worse than what creators are already used to.

If Meta wants Horizon Worlds to be available on the App Store or Play Store, it will need to factor the 30% cut that the companies that own these platforms will take. Zuckerberg has recently spoken out about how he wants the Metaverse to be a place where people can make money, and a cut like this will make that a pretty remote possibility. The general consensus seems to be that the metaverse is basically just the real world in lower resolution and with less convenience.


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