The emerging concept of metaversity landed in 2021, related concept stocks have risen all the way, and have also become the annual word of "Chinese Inventory 2021" and the top ten internet terms of 2021, and the metacosm not only stimulates everyone's curiosity, but also attracts the special attention of technology companies and industry giants.
At a time when the fireworks of the metaverse are booming, Facebook, one of the world's largest social media platforms, directly announced the renaming of Meta, which is derived from the "Metaverse", and it is not difficult to see Zuckerberg's determination to bet on the metaverse.
Just when many people are still waiting, in January 2022, Microsoft announced plans to acquire game development company Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion, after Microsoft has already laid out the metaverse through its software products, and this acquisition may reveal its ambitions in the metaverse field.
In addition to Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Apple and other overseas giants are exploring the metaverse, and domestic Internet giants have also seen the opportunities contained in them, and Tencent, Ali, Baidu, etc. have been heavily deployed. So how did these big factories stride towards the metaverse? This article will sort out 6 well-known Internet giants in China and analyze their layout in the metaverse field.
Tencent: Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet
Tencent should be the earliest domestic Internet companies in the yuanyu wave of enterprises on the ship, in 2012, Tencent for 330 million US dollars to acquire a 49.9% stake in Epic Games; in 2020, Tencent participated in the first share of Roblox G round financing of the meta-universe, and then in 2021, Tencent's exclusive agent of the National Bank of China version of "Roblox" was launched, whether it is Roblox or Epic Games, both have the advantage of competing in the meta-universe system.
In fact, Tencent's exploration of the metacosm is also the most positive. In October 2021, Tencent Game Tianmei Studio released a number of recruitment information about the new project "ZPLAN", which focuses on the direction of game + social networking, and the outside world speculates that the product may be Tencent's first meta-universe game.
Prior to this, Tencent also applied for the registration of a number of meta-universe-related trademarks, such as the Tian dollar universe and the king meta-universe. Although Tencent has not officially announced its entry into the metaverse, all kinds of actions are releasing signals that Tencent is actively embracing the metacosm.
Although Tencent has always maintained an advantage that others cannot surpass in the field of social platforms, and the hardware level is still its shortcomings, so after ByteDance's sky-high acquisition of Pico, the leading manufacturer in the domestic industry, Tencent intends to acquire the game mobile phone company Black Shark Technology for 2.7 billion yuan, and Black Shark as a whole will also be merged into the PCG business group. After this acquisition, Black Shark Technology will transform from a hardware manufacturer mainly a game phone to a VR device production, and VR equipment is also the entrance to the meta-universe world, so Tencent's intention of this major action is self-evident.
Last month, QQ, a social platform with cross-era significance, celebrated its 23rd birthday, and at the same time, QQ also took the first step to explore the metaverse: the Super QQ Show. Compared with the old QQ show, the super QQ show has become 3D, adding a new experience such as AI face pinching, virtual home, virtual scene, and entertainment activities. Super QQ show is no longer a simple business card display function, and the vivid avatar highlights the authenticity and personality of Generation Z users.
The heat of major enterprises entering the meta-universe is still continuing, and Tencent has also accelerated the pace of laying out the meta-universe. Recently, Tencent has launched a new XR (Extended Reality) business, and is currently opening up internal recruitment.
According to the data, the goal of the business is to build a world-class hard technology team under the leadership of industry leaders and compete for the next ticket in the era of hard technology. Although tencent's strength in terms of hardware facilities is still not satisfactory, from the perspective of its series of structural adjustments and investment trends, Tencent's layout in the meta-universe field is multi-directional and multi-angle.
Whether it is the true Internet or the meta-universe, Tencent has laid out a blueprint for this unknown change, and what Tencent can do is to actively strive for this ticket to the future Internet decade.
Alibaba: Support metaversity in all directions
The metacosm is really hot in China, mainly because in August, the two giants of NVIDIA and Facebook have announced the entry into the metacosm. The domestic giant Alibaba naturally did not want to show weakness, and immediately established Hangzhou Digital Technology Co., Ltd. in August to lay out the VR equipment hardware field.
Then starting from technical support, in September 2021, Zhang Xintao, an expert in Alibaba Cloud heterogeneous computing products, said that for enterprise-level applications in the metacosm, Alibaba Cloud provides a complete set of visual computing solutions from rendering, streaming to encoding. Last December, Alibaba Cloud announced a partnership with game development studio JP GAMES Co. Ltd. has established a partnership to provide meta-universe construction support services and unprecedented interactive experiences.
In September of the same year, Ali signed the first hyper-realistic digital person in China, AYAYI, joined Alibaba and became the digital manager of Tmall Super Brand Day. Also during the Winter Olympics, a new digital human Winter Olympics promotion officer "Winter Winter" was launched to help promote the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
In December, YuanjingShengsheng (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. was established, mainly engaged in software development, computer system services, performance brokerage, Internet information, etc., with the intention of exploring the potential of virtual people in the current popular marketing methods such as virtual idols or e-commerce with goods.
At last year's Alibaba 2021 Annual Cloud Habitat Conference, Alibaba announced the establishment of XR Lab, which is its latest new laboratory for AR, VR and meta-universe technology to explore the future operating system under the next generation of cloud-network integration architecture and focus on the research of a new generation of mobile computing platforms.
At the meeting, Tan Ping, head of the XR Laboratory, elaborated on Ali's understanding of the metaverse, which was divided into four layers:
L1 (Holographic Construction): Build a map/person/object model in the virtual world and display it on the terminal hardware, such as the VR house viewing applications that are now available on the market, and Ali's layout at this level is to cooperate with Tmall to build a holographic store.
L2 (Holographic Simulation): The virtual world of people/things simulates the dynamics of the real world, so that the virtual infinitely close to the real world, such as the existing VR games on the market, digital twin applications, etc. Alibaba chose to partner with startups to virtualize people, and AYAYI is an attempt at this level.
L3 (virtual-real fusion): The information of the virtual world is superimposed on the real world display, and the essence of the technology is to build a high-precision three-dimensional map of the entire world, and accurately realize positioning and virtual information superposition on this map. This level is most suitable for some display scenes in reality, and Ali cooperated with the Song Art Museum to build an AR art exhibition.
L4 (virtual-real linkage): The behavior of the virtual world generates feedback in the real world, and the real world is transformed by changing the virtual world, ali's attempt at this level is to make an apple picking robot.
In addition, like Tencent, Ali is also laying more foreshadowing for the development of the metaverse in advance, Ali has applied for the registration of "Ali metacosmity", "Taobao metacosmity", "DingTalk metacosm", "METAMEETING", "METALEARNING", "metacosm DIMM" and other trademarks, as an Internet giant that is on a par with Tencent, Ali's foreshadowing in the metacosm is also looking forward to.
Baidu: Landed the first meta-universe product
Although the BAT big three have always been well known, Baidu, as a "B", has been far behind by Tencent and Ali. However, in this wave of meta-universe, Baidu is not willing to show weakness, stunned is preemptive, taking the lead in launching a landed meta-universe product - Xi'an in the domestic Internet factory.
As early as August 18, 2021, at the Baidu World Congress 2021, Greem has already made an appearance. It is a meta-universe social App in which users can create avatars, and can communicate with friends in the virtual world in real time voice, interaction, designed to be based on technology, with the concept of openness, together with customers, developers, users, to create a multi-person interactive virtual world with identity, economic prosperity, across virtual and reality, and permanent survival.
The reason why Greem can launch so quickly is because it has been developed and tested for more than a year, and the reason why Baidu can be laid out in advance is due to its long-term accumulation in VR.
As early as 2016, that is, the first year of VR, VR technology ushered in a round of explosion, when Baidu entered vr by launching WebVR. However, VR technology has not made breakthrough progress after two years of hot years, and it has soon cooled down, and Baidu's VR strategy has also made corresponding changes, and began to focus on B-side use scenarios.
In June 2021, Baidu launched the VR 2.0 panoramic architecture, which is supported by technologies such as intelligent auditing, intelligent editing, and virtual avatars, and has two major platforms for VR creation and VR interaction, connecting commercialization scenarios including education, marketing, government and enterprise/industry.
From the introduction of Greeng on the official website, the "online education", "online exhibition" and "online forum" mentioned in it will be the most core content embodiment of "Greeam" in the future, which is also very in line with Baidu VR's development strategy.
In addition to the application level of VR2.0 and Greece, in terms of hardware, Baidu's iQiyi has the iQIYI Adventure Series VR, which provides a hardware entrance for Baidu's layout meta-universe.
Of course, although Greeng preemptively launched and launched an internal beta version in December 2021, the effect it showed was not satisfactory, although it could meet some basic needs, but the actual experience was too poor, which also triggered heated discussions. In this regard, Baidu is well aware of this, so when releasing the internal beta version, it was very modest to mark the version as negative 6.0 version, which means that it is far from reaching the official version.
This also happens to reflect how Baidu understands the current metaverse, Baidu vice president Ma Jie said, "The metacosm is essentially a virtual and digital process of the real world, which requires a lot of transformation of content production, economic systems, user experience and physical world content, etc., which will become a human second space parallel to the real world." In short, the metacosm is a virtual world that is born out of the real world, parallel to the real world, and always online. But on the other hand, "the metaverse is still in a very early stage of industrial exploration, and its development is gradual, and it will take a long time for the entire community to build and mature." ”
Therefore, at present, Baidu's products and technology accumulation related to the metacosm are mainly concentrated in the fields of AI, cloud computing and VR.
NetEase: Let's ring the bell in the metaverse first
Since the outbreak of the new crown in 2020, people have had to reduce the social interaction in reality, which has also promoted the development of the virtual economy such as the metaverse, which is also a product of the times. But in the same context, some products with metaverse attributes also came into being, even before the metaverse exploded.
NetEase's meta-universe product "Yaotai" is such a product, due to the impact of the epidemic, people began to work online, online conference software such as Zoom, DingTalk, Tencent conference, etc. have become an indispensable tool for people's work for a while, but there is also another solution, that is, to hold meetings in some large multiplayer games, such as in "Minecraft" held a number of Ivy League graduation ceremonies, although the communication in the actual work also has to use other display tools, But it's clear that the latter's interactivity and immersion are more impressive.
And if you separate the latter from the game and add some tools that can assist the office, won't you be able to achieve a virtual meeting that is more immersive than online meetings?
Therefore, in October 2020, NetEase's immersive activity platform "Yaotai" was officially unveiled, in addition to customizing the activity scene, it also provided PPT embedded playback, free switching of sub-venues and conference functions such as text and voice group chat.
After the concept of meta-universe spread throughout China, "Yaotai" became an important product of NetEase in the direction of meta-universe. In December last year, NetEase Cloud Music was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and NetEase also held the first "meta-universe" listing ceremony through "Yaotai", and its founder Ding Lei also rang the bell with his two virtual human figures, Three Ding Lei, which was impressive.
The virtual person is also one of the other major layouts of NetEase. NetEase Fuxi was first established in September 2017, mainly engaged in games and pan-entertainment AI research and application technology, there are currently five major research directions covering reinforcement learning, image action, virtual people, natural language, user portraits, and technology middle office. AI face pinching is one of Fuxi's many landing applications, and Sanding Lei's bell ringing is also inseparable from Fuxi's deep cultivation in virtual people.
Today's Internet giants have changed their thinking, no longer their own dead in a certain direction, but self-research + investment to ensure that they can better grasp the development of the industry, NetEase's layout of virtual people, is not limited to self-research, foreign investment is also a lot.
In 2021, there are 5 investment events in netease's virtual person industry alone, namely the avatar technology company Genies, the "meta-universe" social platform Imvu, the American live broadcasting company Maestro of virtual interactive concerts, the parent company of the virtual image "Microsoft Xiaoice" - Beijing Red Cotton Xiaoice Technology Co., Ltd., and the sub-world culture that cuts into the market with star virtual people.
And in December 2021, at the NetEase Innovation Enterprise Conference, NetEase Zhiqi also released IM+RTC+ virtual person solutions, game/VR voice solutions, virtual world digital content risk control solutions, and NetEase Cloud Letter 'converged communication + ∞' unlimited integration plan to help the development and application of meta-universe technology.
And this echoes NetEase's attitude towards the metaverse, as early as 2021 NetEase's Q3 quarterly report conference call, Ding Lei said, "The metacosm is a very hot concept, NetEase is ready for the metacosm related technologies and rules, we believe that the day the metacosm really comes, NetEase has the ability to quickly rush." ”
In this way, NetEase is indeed fully prepared, but in the face of the meta-universe, the major technology Internet giants are all rubbing their hands, and in the end, whose hand dies has to see the wonderful game after that.
JD.com: Aiming at the industrial metacosm
After the explosion of the meta-universe, Ali recruited the virtual person AYAYI as the digital manager of Tmall Super Brand Day in September 2021, and Jingdong, which is also an e-commerce giant, is not far behind, and also tries to introduce virtual people into the e-commerce scene, during the Jingdong 11.11 period, Jingdong Import Supermarket under Jingdong International cooperated with XR live broadcasting company Qi Le Infinite, using virtual IP anchor "VIVI Zihan" to open the meta-universe virtual live broadcast mode.
The digital anchor Xiaomeng has been "posted" during the Jingdong Double Eleven last year, covering 3C, home appliances, mother and baby and other types of Jingdong self-operated stores. Recently, Jingdong once again launched the beauty virtual anchor "Xiaomei", and is currently in the live broadcast room of more than 20 beauty brands such as YSL, L'Oréal, OLAY, and Keyan's, opening the live broadcast debut, and Jingdong is polishing the form of virtual people + live broadcast sales more and more skillfully.
On the other hand, under the prospect of overseas NFT explosion, some domestic companies are also exploring the same scene. At the JD Discovery-JD Global Technology Explorer Conference in November 2021, JD.com launched an NFT commemorative voucher based on jd.com's zhizhen chain.
Subsequently, in the second month, the digital collection trading platform "Lingxian" was launched, and users who purchased the digital collection could use the digital collection for research, exhibition, appreciation and collection. However, the use of digital collections for speculation, over-the-counter trading or use in any illegal way is strictly prohibited, and Lingxian is also another digital collection platform after Ant's Whale Detective and Tencent's phantom core.
JD.com is also providing many scenario solutions for the metaverse, such as due to the impact of the epidemic, many offline conferences and exhibitions cannot be carried out. JD Yuan Universe created a "cloud exhibition" to break through space restrictions, create an immersive experience, and realize the 365-day online exhibition. At the SAIC SoA Platform Developer Conference, Jingdong Retail Cloud displayed the panoramic view of the car on the computer and mobile phone screens in a 3D data way of the car, thus replacing the supplementary 4S store to see the car offline.
Jingdong retail cloud intelligent ARVR application integrates 3D rendering engine, intelligent interaction, intelligent perception and other core technologies to create panoramic solutions, providing VR customized services for e-commerce enterprises, government agencies, tourist attractions, real estate, automobiles and other industries, especially in the post-epidemic era, physical retail and offline exhibitions have encountered an unprecedented crisis, Jingdong Meta-Universe in the digital parallel world, using new technologies, new ideas to create new business value.
However, Jingdong's accumulation is also reflected in the help of the industry, at the NetEase Future Conference held on December 17, 2021, Tao Dacheng, president of the Jingdong Exploration Research Institute and academician of the Australian Academy of Sciences, gave a keynote speech on "Building a New World of Digital and Physical Integration", proposing the concept of "industrial metacosmity" for the first time, and focusing on its development layout and basic practice.
He said that at present, people should pay more attention to the huge value of the simulation optimization ability of the metacosm in the real economy, and the industrial metacosm, which is considered to be the "metacosm + industry", as the interface between the introduction of digital capabilities into the real world and the real economy, not only uses the digital world to reconstruct the physical attributes and social attributes in the real world, but also pays more attention to the improvement of the digital world's ability to recreate the real world.
"We not only emphasize the construction of the digital world, but pay more attention to the ability of the digital world to recreate the real world, and strive to enhance the ability of human beings to understand and transform the world in the real world and the real economy, which is the connotation interpretation of the metaverse of JD.com, that is, the main content of the industrial metacosm."
To this end, JD.com launched the OmniForce open ecological platform. The platform is a new generation of infrastructure for the digital and intelligent social supply chain built by the JD Exploration Research Institute combining basic theoretical research and JD.com's technical practice and cooperating with partners.
In the system of OmniForce's open ecosystem platform, JD.com will provide integrated middle-office solutions to provide developers with the ability to reproduce digital twins, the simulation optimization capabilities of digital companions, and the transformation of the real world by digital natives, providing the lowest basic support for the industrial metaverse.
At present, Jingdong has achieved initial results in retail and logistics scenarios, using omniForce platform to achieve simulation optimization of warehousing scenarios, thereby greatly improving logistics efficiency and reducing costs, which shows that Jingdong has focused on industrial empowerment of the meta-universe and appears more landed.
BYTE: Hugely invested in Pico, on par with Meta
At the end of August 2021, many media reported a news about ByteDance's huge acquisition of a hardware technology company, saying that Zhang Yiming invested $1.5 billion (about 9.6 billion yuan) to acquire VR software and hardware research and development manufacturer "Pico", and Pico's internal letter confirmed the fact that it was acquired by Byte, which also became the most expensive one in the VR field in 2021.
The acquisition event highlighted the important layout of Byte in the meta-universe field, and then we saw the well-known virtual person "Liu Yexi" launched by the official team of Douyin, which set a record of millions of fans on the release of the first video, and received more than 3 million likes, and then the virtual person gradually caused a new round of investment, and gave birth to a number of highly sought after virtual idols.
In January this year, ByteDance launched a metaverse social App called "Party Island", in the application users can create their own avatar, chat with friends, shopping, watch movies, enjoy immersive social experience, it can be said that so far, ByteDance in the metaverse layout has dropped tens of billions of yuan, covering social software, VR hardware and virtual people, the layout can be described as extensive.
Byte as a new Internet giant that has come out of "BAT" in recent years, has grown into a force that cannot be ignored, and its every move has also received the attention of many people inside and outside the industry, and ByteDance's performance in the metaverse is not exaggerated to describe it as "radical", and behind this Byte is also facing the same situation as Meta (Facebook renaming company), whether it is the obstruction of user growth, or the decline in the company's revenue, it seems that a ceiling is also hanging on the head of Byte.
When faced with the metaverse known as the "next generation of Internet", Byte chose the strategy of "first throw money and then follow up", especially its products are more extensive in globalization, and can also meet the needs of users in various regions, which also has a lot of help for the openness of the metaverse, which seems to have a lot of coupling with Meta, so many business analysts will compare ByteDance with Meta, especially in the product line of metaverse, which also acquired a VR hardware company. There are also social products with a large number of users, which reflect the old saying that "heroes see the same".
Of course, whether ByteDance's first-step strategy can be realized, and whether products like "Party Island" can become the exclusive social products of the metaverse, but in the face of the era of the metacosm, ByteDance seems to be ready to make the metacosm also "jump up".
Summary of the current situation of the Internet giant's layout metacosm
When we comb through the performance of these Internet giants in the metaverse field, we see the difference in their strategies, some prefer hardware, some prefer social software, and some are full of confidence in preparing or subverting user cognition of products, everything seems to be full of vitality, especially after experiencing the heat of the meta-universe in 2021, each family has spent a lot of money to bet on the meta-universe track, and therefore there are some strategic similarities.
The reason for the strategic similarity is also inseparable from the obstruction of user growth and the decline in revenue, which reflects the bottleneck of development in a large era, and according to the monthly active growth of mobile Internet users released by QuestMobile in 2021, its growth has become saturated. Therefore, when mobile Internet users face the problem of growth, the giants invariably choose to open up a path, and this is another inducement for the heat of the metaverse itself.
At the same time, in addition to these Internet giants, we have also seen more large Internet companies have also joined the track of the layout of the metaverse, such as the B station that focuses on young users is testing the related meta-universe business "high-energy chain", iQiyi has also launched its own products on VR hardware, and 360, which says that the meta-universe is a scam, but the body is not dominated, has released the meta-universe digital security system framework.
It can be seen that when the giants explore the way in front, many medium and large Internet technology companies are not far behind, throwing out their own methods of betting on the meta-universe, and relying on the advantages of their own platforms, launched a meta-universe product that is more in line with the tone of their own products, there is a "meta-universe +" taste, but this time people no longer mention the slogan of "Internet +" in the past, and choose the meta-universe itself as a gimmick.
Of course, as for who can finally come out on top in the meta-universe track, there seems to be no definite number at present, but this time everyone's starting line seems to be not much different, which is the fun of the story.
Future outlook
As the metacosm reached its peak of popularity at the end of last year, it is now obvious that its energy has declined, but we have also seen some companies related to the metacosm have obtained good financing, and these investment institutions are also some established investors, so on the one hand, the mass market is cooling, on the other hand, institutions and entrepreneurs are still going up the river.
We also believe that with the influx of resources from all sides, the metaverse will still experience a good period of blue ocean development, which will also reverse the metacosm to more users, rather than just the concept of hype.
Of course, all the stories seem to fit the main line in development, the trend of history will never be stagnant for some reasons, only twists and turns and straight through, and what is in front of large enterprises is the peak of the second stage of Internet development dividends, so whether the metacosm can really become the "second growth curve" of these large enterprises, we still play a question mark, after all, the gap between ideal and reality needs enough resources to fill, and even some luck.
On the other hand, many innovative companies are also targeting this blue ocean, and whether they can grow into new giants may be the climax of the story and the end we are looking forward to.
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