Six trends are driving the use of metaverse technologies today and will continue to drive its use over the next three to five years, according to management consulting company Gartner.
Gaming
Enterprises will adopt “serious games” — gaming technologies, experiences, and storytelling for training and simulation of specific work tasks and functions. Gartner predicts that by 2025, the serious games market will grow by 25 percent due to the impact of metaverse technologies.
Digital humans
Organizations are already planning on using digital AI-driven humans to act as identified digital agents within metaverse environments for customer service, support, sales, and other interactions with current and potential customers. Gartner predicts that by 2027, a majority of B2C enterprise CMOs will have a dedicated budget for digital humans in metaverse experiences.
Virtual spaces
A virtual space — or virtual world — is a computer-generated environment where groups of people can come together using personal avatars or holograms. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 10 percent of workers will regularly use virtual spaces (in activities such as sales, onboarding, and remote teams), up from 1 percent in 2022.
Shared experiences
A shared experience brings a group of people together within a virtual space. By 2028, 10 percent of public events (such as sports and performing arts) will offer participation in the metaverse, fueling rapid buildout of commercial metaverse shared experiences, according to Gartner.
Tokenized assets
Tokenized assets offer new business models for content creators. In metaverse experiences, most tokenized assets will use non-fungible token technologies (NFTs). Gartner predicts that by 2027, 25% of retail organizations with an e-commerce presence will have completed at least one proof of concept for tokenized assets using metaverse technologies.
Spacial computing
Spatial computing combines physical and digital objects to digitally enhance physical spaces. This allows organizations to get more out of physical and digital assets by surfacing related, “unseen” digital information and content anchored to people, places, and things. Gartner predicts that by 2026, the second and third iterations of spatial computing glasses will arrive, creating a more pervasive metaverse experience connected to the physical world.
